The popular website Something Awful.com took matters into their own hands following the path of destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, by setting up a relief fund using PayPal as the middle-man. What happened next was unexpected to say the least..
With its main Web servers located in downtown New Orleans and offline due to flooding, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka asked visitors to donate to the Red Cross from a temporary page explaining the situation.
Unable to take credit card payments directly, Kyanka set up a PayPal account specifically to handle the effort. Donations poured in at a rate of almost $3,900 per hour - an astounding number from any perspective. That is, until PayPal shut down Something Awful"s donation account late Saturday evening. Because PayPal"s customer support was closed for the night, Kyanka was unable to discover why $27,695.41 in Red Cross relief funds were locked. PayPal"s automated system explained that it had received "more than one report of suspicious behavior from your buyers."