Keith Griffith, the founder of free gay Website Cruising for Sex, is embroiled in a fight with online fund transfer service PayPal over a hold on donations collected by his site to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.
According to a press release from Griffith, the Website started the fundraiser for two of its New Orleans-based employees shortly after the gravity of the storm became apparent. For several days, money came into the account, but on Tuesday, PayPal suspended the collection of donations and froze the money from being transferred into the bank accounts of those for whom it was intended.
“This is cruel, absolutely cruel,” said Griffith. “I have emailed and phoned them and thus far we have met a wall of complete and utter disinterest. It is as if we are not dealing with fellow human beings.”
Sarah Bettencourt, the media spokesperson for PayPal, told AVN.com that the account was suspended because the firm by policy does not handle transactions for adult Websites, but that if a separate site was set up strictly for Katrina donations, the funds would be released.
“Our customer service department has reached out to this account holder,” explained Bettencourt, “and we understand that he would like to raise money for these employees, and we would like to help him do that. So we just asked him to set up a separate Websire, and if he wants to use PayPal to raise money for this, we certainly would like to support him to do that, but he just can’t have the donate button associated with an adult site.
“So there were several donation buttons on this Website, on pages that violated our policies, including donations to keep the site free by supporting the site’s sponsor, and our policy does clearly state that we do not allow our service to be used to accept donations for adult goods or services.
“As far as the funds, he just needs to take the PayPal buttons off of the adult Website and fill out an affidavit that says that he did so. We’ll by no means keep the funds from him; as soon as we get that affidavit, we’ll either write him a check or release the funds back to him.”
Griffith’s attorney, Mark Forster, argues that it’s PayPal, and not Griffith, violating the terms of service, stating, “PayPal’s position is not just morally reprehensible, it is also legally unjustifiable. The PayPal terms of use with CFS.com only prohibit use of PayPal for receipt of donations for any obscene or sexually oriented goods or services. Obviously, the fact that CFS.com is accepting donations to assist its people in New Orleans affected by Hurricane Katrina doesn’t come close to that description. PayPal needs to revisit and reverse its incorrect decision immediately.”
Griffith believes his home may have been flooded, but he has been focusing his concern primarily on helping those who work with him and restoring his business to a stable position.
“I had to waste an entire day Tuesday trying to deal with this,” Griffith remonstrated, “and of course that was 24 hours when money could not be raised for [the victims].”
To the suggestion that he set up an alternate Website for donations, Griffith replied, “Sure, I’ll do that between worrying about whether my home is under water and when I’m not consoling others who have lost so much.”
