GPal (aka GunPal) Payment System Under Investigation

This morning we received the following notice from the GunsAmerica operation. It appears there have been serious problems with transactions handled by GPal (formerly GunPal). If you are considering doing a transaction with GPal as the recipient of payments, we suggest you “hold off” until all serious questions have been answered. Please read the following notice.

Message from GunsAmerica.com — October 26, 2010

This message is about the 3rd party payment service for guns known as Gpal, or GunPal before that. Down this message a bit you will see a link to file a complaint if you feel you have been wronged.

This is solely a public service announcement. GPal/GunPal has never been an authorized payment system on GunsAmerica. There is some confusion about this because some of the other sites where you can buy and sell guns did endorse and even integrate GPal/GunPal into their websites. We did not, even though we were offered a “deal” out of the profits like everyone else, and it was for a reason that we didn’t. A Paypal-like system for guns with similar fees in the 3% range is impossible for the gun industry. [Text edited for length.]

Now, back to GPal. Because even though we never endorsed GPal or integrated it into GunsAmerica, a number of our sellers did take payments through them. Many have emailed us that they are unable to withdraw their funds now and have asked for help. We also have a lot of buyers who buy guns on all the online sites who are caught in the middle and have emailed us to see if we know anything.

I spoke to Carl Chapman from the Marin County District Attorney’s Office, who is in charge of managing this case. The GPal case is an open investigation, not a case that has been labeled criminal at this time. There are several agencies involved and as far as I can tell, nobody should assume right now that GPal did anything illegal. Everyone who made and accepted payments with them trusted them to be a successful enterprise. This could just be a speed bump from which they have yet to recover. Even PayPal had speed bumps, and they too were accused of fraudulent activity at the time.

We are sending this email to let you know how to file a complaint. We have nothing to do with GPal and have no knowledge of their relationships with other online gun buying and selling sites and/or internet discussion forums. We elected to not do business with GPal from the start because of exactly these concerns.

Mr. Chapman has asked that all complaints go through The Internet Crime Complaint Center. The URL for the complaint form is at http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/

Don’t worry, this is not a black hole of government inaction. All the complaints for this case go right to Mr. Chapman in spreadsheet form that is easier for him to deal with than individual complaints on the telephone.

Hopefully the situation with GPal will resolve itself and everyone will get their money back. Many small gun dealers, accepting the endorsements of trusted entities (GunsAmerica not being one of them), trusted Gpal and took payments through them. They need those funds! We pray that Gpal does make it through and that no fraudulent activity is found so that everyone gets their money. The gun industry is a very small place and we are attacked from the outside by people and organizations every day. It is better for all of us to assume the best in each other, not the worst, and let the problems work themselves out if at all possible.

Whether you choose to use GPal now or in the future is up to you. We do not authorize any third party payment system. It is still a free country to some extent. And we most likely will not be updating our information about GPal in the future as we have nothing to do with them. The only public support forum we know of was recently closed by those hosting them. Regular customer support at GPal is support@gpal.net and the customer support phone number is 1-800-813-4725.

The notice above was provided by GunsAmerica. AccurateShooter.com cannot confirm or deny any of the assertions made in the notice. We reprint it here to assist our readers, but you will want to do your own fact-checking.

No We Never Used GPal for Receiving Donations
As a final note, in the past, some of our AccurateShooter.com readers requested that we take donations via GPal/Gunpal. After investigating the GPal service, and learning of some problems buyers and sellers were having, even a year ago, AccurateShooter.com decided to stay away from GPal altogether. It appears that was a wise decision.