American University journalism grad student John Marcario informs me that as of Feb. 28 the PayPal link on SaveToby.com — the Website claiming that a cute bunny named Toby will be cooked and eaten unless his owner receives $50,000 in donations by June 30 — returns this error message: This recipient is currently unable to receive money.
It's unclear why the account has been deactivated and whether the shutdown is permanent or temporary, but Marcario, who has been digging for dirt on the unsavory site and its shadowy Webmaster for the past week, finds it unsurprising given the following...
It's unclear why the account has been deactivated and whether the shutdown is permanent or temporary, but Marcario, who has been digging for dirt on the unsavory site and its shadowy Webmaster for the past week, finds it unsurprising given the following...
- Though the Website is legitimately owned by a real person according to registrar www.godaddy.com, no information on the owner is available because the domain was registered by proxy (see WHOIS).
- The company name of Save Toby Inc. is not registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission nor legally traded on the NYSE.
- Merchandise associated with SaveToby.com is sold through Café Press, which keeps a portion of all sales from the online store but will not divulge information about the proprietor.
- Last week PayPal was looking into the donate@savetoby.com account according to a PayPal customer service representative. This week the link for donating money was temporarily shut down.
- There are several possible reasons for an account to be unable to receive funds, PayPal says, including insufficient information about the account holder.
- When money was donated into the account prior to its suspension, the name James Mefford appeared as the “business name.”
- Repeated emails to support@savetoby.com have not been responded to.
Comments
I did a little research…
The message: “This recipient is currently unable to receive money.” is apparently an indication that a a person has a “Personal” PayPal account with certain transaction limits. Once the transaction limits are reached, the account is locked either for a month, or until the user applies for a business account.
My guess is that there were too many payments, so PayPal automatically locked the account (as a personal account). The account owners never applied for a “business” account, and Toby became a tasty meal.
Why do so many people NOT get this website? After 5 minutes BOTH my girlfriend and I did. This is a HOAX – a joke. All you have to do is read a little: the bunny is taken out to the park; he is fed well; he has a BIG cage to run in. Anyone who devotes that much time to a pet IS NOT going to eat him! Obviously, someone with a little to much time on his/her hands & some imagination did this – just to have some FUN. I hope the person who did this website gets the 50K; they deserve it on creativity alone!
saveorkill.com similar to Toby, but more interesting than SaveToby.com…