The owner of Run it Once, Phil Galfond, got in trouble with PayPal after he received $117k in July. PayPal put his money on hold for six months before he managed to get the new CEO of PayPal to help his case and unfreeze his money. Phil also warned new business owners not to send big transactions, as they could find themselves in similar trouble as Phil did.
WSOP legend Chris Moneymaker had a similar issue with PayPal in 2021 when they froze his $12,000 from sports betting. Chris decided to sue them over their one-sided terms of service, which state PayPal has the right to freeze any account for 180 days. PayPal often refuses to let users know why their accounts got frozen, and they cannot send any evidence to help their case.
In Galfond’s case, everything was solved, and the new PayPal CEO could be why Galfond had more luck than Moneymaker. Since new CEO Alex Chriss took over, he has been personally responding to users and helping them as part of the customer support team on X.
Galfond was ready to start the ward with PayPal on social media, but after everything was solved, he took a light approach and just said, “I’m conflicted. After hearing what so many others have been through, I feel that it’s unfair I got special treatment. I also don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth and continue to criticize. So, I guess I’ll simply say thank you to everyone who shared their stories and frustrations (and BTC memes), which helped boost this post. I hope PayPal will change some of these practices, which fall somewhere between negligent and shady, and I wish everyone who’s been impacted by them the best of luck in getting their situation resolved as quickly as possible.”
