Chris Moneymaker to Sue PayPal for $12,000 in Seized Funds

Chris Moneymaker is looking to start a class action lawsuit against PayPal, after the payment processor took more than $12k from his account.

The 2003 World Series of Poker main event winner and Americas Cardroom ambassador claims that the online payments site confiscated $12,000 from him after Moneymaker reportedly violated the terms and conditions of the site.

Moneymaker says that the $12,000 was money that he was holding for a $1,000 buy-in fantasy football league, and that the site had no right to confiscate that money.

In 2020 Moneymaker and 11 friends entered into a Fantasy Sports League and he agreed to escrow the $1,000 from each player in his PayPal account. He was emailed by PayPal to say this was a violation of the user agreement and his account had been ‘limited’. This month they confiscated the funds rather than returned them to each player. 

Many other US poker players have since contacted Moneymaker to say similar things have happened to them including Mike Matusow who called the company out as thieves.

He has enlisted the help of The Bensamochan Law Firm who sent a press releases announcing their intention to sue PayPal. Moneymaker commented: “I’ll leave to my lawyers to determine what the law says, but I think this is straight-up theft and Paypal is a payments bully. This is less about the money – though $12,0000 is a lot of money – it’s about the principle of stealing other people’s money and hiding behind thousands of words of legal mumbo jumbo that no one reads.”

Certain payments require PayPal pre-approval, the company’s ‘acceptable use’ list including “activities involving gambling, gaming and/or any other activity with an entry fee and a prize, including, but not limited to casino games, sports betting, horse or greyhound racing, fantasy sports, lottery tickets, other ventures that facilitate gambling, games of skill (whether or not legally defined as gambling) and sweepstakes, if the operator and customers are located exclusively in jurisdictions where such activities are permitted by law.”

That offers PayPal a lot of excuses when it comes to poker player accounts, and whatever the exact cause of this recent hit on Moneymaker, he is far from the first poker player to be stung by the online payments’ provider.

Poker and crypto go hand in hand

Due to so many problems with payment providers and online gambling regulations all over the world, it really is no wonder why so many poker players are switching to cryptocurrencies lately. Even regulated poker sites like Natural8 for example, are switching mostly to crypto and removing support for popular e-wallets like Skrill or Neteller, mainly due to high fees for the operators.

This is also fueled by increased popularity of poker apps such as PokerBROS, PPPoker and UPoker, where most of transactions are done in either Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDT/USDC stablecoins. You just can’t beat the anonymity, speed, relative ease of use and knowing, that no one can lock you out of your funds just like that. We’ll certainly see a mass adoption of crypto among poker players in next few years.

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