The Oakeshott Institute in the midwestern USA is in financial trouble after the pandemic shut down their face-to-face fundraising events and then Paypal confiscated a substantial sum of money (as an aside: never ever leave money in a Paypal account which you can't afford to lose- because of fraud and money laundering, they are very aggressive at freezing accounts, and because they are cheap they make it hard for customers to speak to an actual person and appeal a case). Craig and Nathan from Arms & Armor have launched a GoFundMe to pay the rent and the electricity bills https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-oakeshott-institute

(their vlog about it https://www.arms-n-armor.com/blogs/news/support-the-oakeshott-institute-from-anti-sword-bias)

Edit: added markup around links

I am pulling a 404 on the link. Might be on my end since I'm having a few other sites come back unavailable that should not.

Might be fixed now!

Also, to make sure I'm following here, PayPal basically robbed a museum and then tried to extort said museum into buying a new unwanted service, and then finally settled for only robbing the museum? I mean, that seems like the story here.

Didn't realize this was a thing. Great service that I'm glad I use much less! Hope this all works out for the institute. Seems like we've lost access to quite a few collections. I'd hate to see this go private too!

This is a pretty terrible situation on multiple levels. As appalled as I am that their money would be confiscated (and I am genuinely appalled), I also feel badly that I haven't supported the Institute before to keep them from being this close to financial disaster. I chipped in some money and wish I could do more.

So...some 23-year old paypal staffer dropped his avocado toast in terror when he saw a picture of a sword...

Unfortunately, this kind of behaviour is common among banks and web services companies in the USA, and usually laid down at a high level. Sometimes it is a video host demonetarizing documentaries on atrocities in WW II, sometimes it is a porn performer trying to open a business account and having their private account shut down without notice, and sometimes it is Paypal freezing an account or confiscating the money in it because some keyword triggered a business rule. But since this is myArmoury dot com not UsPolitics dot com, we can concentrate on helping out the Oakeshott Institute.

Have done what I can in the moment. Timing is bad for me. Trying to see what else I might be able to do in slightly more than the moment!

Donated. Sorry this happened.

It's too bad your State Attorney General isn't looking into this for you - how many others are facing the same situation w/o recourse? It'd be one thing if they simply cancelled your account because they didn't like your business; it's quite another that they are seizing assets - based on their whim/rules. It seems like they should be subject to some oversight by FRB, SEC or FTC.

Anyway - hope they are able to pull through this.

Well first time making a Go Fund Me donation, after a GOOGLE search to find out how it works. ( It was easy to do with a credit card .... Didn't have the irony of using Paypal to send the funds :p )

What Paypal did seems like legalized or dubiously legalized theft ! Government also confiscate money and cash when they suspect criminal activity at times without any supporting proof, but usually one can get the money back when one can prove that the money wasn't the fruit of crime or money laundering.

So I donated $200 US dollars and I hope that it can keep the Oakeshott financially solvent for a while longer.

Maybe getting this baseless confiscation of funds on the news media could shame Paypal into returning the " stolen funds " under a false and erroneous pretext ?

Oh, and I guess never leave any substantial funds in one's Paypal account. :wtf:

Sorry to hear this.

I closed my Paypal account years ago. I saw that the company was nothing but trouble back then, and stopped doing business with them because of shady business practices. I was very surprised to see so many people flocking to Paypal despite the warning signs.