Prominent pro and Run It Once (RIO) founder Phil Galfond has escaped the possibility of legal action against online wallet PayPal after the California-based financial services firm suddenly reversed its prior policy and unfroze the $117,000 in Galfond's account that had been inaccessible for six months. Though Galfond didn't specify further, the funds may have been from subscriptions to his Beyond the Game poker-coaching business.
On Sunday, Galfond tweeted about PayPal freezing the funds, which were purchases made by new accounts:
Ongoing PayPal issue
Galfond's circumstance was another illustration of alleged massive and ongoing consumer issues involving PayPal, which has been widely accused of seizing and retaining funds from untold numbers of customers, leaving many with no recourse to recover those frozen balances. Known for many years as an online wallet with an antipathy toward almost everything gambling-related, PayPal has already had one very public brush with the pro-poker world. In 2021, PayPal perpetually froze over $12,000 in funds belonging to Chris Moneymaker. Moneymaker had collected the funds from friends who had paid their entries into a private DFS league, which led, eventually, to the poker icon threatening a lawsuit against PayPal.
Well-known gambling attorney Eric Bensamochan began not only to build a claim for Moneymaker against PayPal, but also began assembling a much larger class action against PayPal based on the widespread reports of similar seizures involving PayPal users. PayPal tried to dodge a growing PR black eye by reversing itself and unfreezing Moneymaker's funds, which also made him ineligible to be part of the class action. Instead, that action went forward with Poker League of Nations founder Lena Evans as one of the lead plaintiffs, after she also provided details of an unexplained funds seizure by PayPal.
Moneymaker was one of the first to respond to Galfond's plight, and he left no doubt of his ongoing bitterness toward PayPal:
PayPal again reverses course, unlocks Galfond's funds
Galfond turned out to have friends in the right places, and less than 24 hours later, his account was abruptly unfrozen:
Galfond acknowledged that he had been ready to launch a "social media war, " which had proven to be an effective strategy for Moneymaker in the earlier battle against PayPal. And even though the matter was resolved after only six months, for Galfond, like Moneymaker, the experience left a bitter taste. He concluded his update with, "I hope @PayPal will change some of these practices, which fall somewhere between negligent and shady...."
