[abalone]

It sure sounds like Schiller's team screwed up here and should reinstate his account forthwith.

In short, Kapeli helped a relative open an account years ago but has otherwise been unassociated with that account. He technically shouldn't have used his credit card to help his relative, but this is Romania and it's just a nominal $99 fee, so he probably didn't think much of it. Apple's stance is they now look at them as "linked" accounts due to the use of his credit card and old devices, so they were justified in shutting down his account for fraudulent activity on the other one.

Problem is Apple never contacted Kapeli's account before shutting both of them down. They didn't do any extra due diligence for a top developer. Their notices only went to the other account, apparently, and Kapeli never had a chance to see them. He just woke up one day and his account was banned.

Now, that's just dumb. If the accounts are linked, why not notify both accounts?

Kapeli's an extremely well-respected app and has oodles of credibility. That alone should have triggered a deeper investigation before shutting him down. That fact that they know what happened here and still refuse to reinstate the account is shameful.

[carterehsmith]

> "In short, Kapeli helped a relative open an account years ago but has otherwise been unassociated with that account."

That's what Kapeli claims. How exactly do you know that the above is true? As opposed to, you know, himself creating two accounts.

[abalone]

Logic. Apple called him and conceded that the reason they thought they were the same "entity" is simply because both used the same credit card number. If Kapeli wanted to be deceptive and create another account to commit a bunch of fraud on that appeared unassociated with him, he'd use another credit card, bundle ID, etc.

[dpark]

Of course, because no one committing fraud ever makes mistakes.

I have no idea if Popescu was really involved in the fraudulent activity or not. But dismissing it as too dumb to be possible is no better than dismissing the possibility of Apple making a detection mistake as too dumb to be possible.

[abalone]

I didn't say it was dumb to think it "possible" for him to be the culprit. I said it was dumb to shut down a top developer account without warning.

[dpark]

I'm referring to your claim that he would have used a different credit card and ID as if this is obviously true. It's neither true nor obvious since he didn't realize by his own admission that the accounts were linked.

[abalone]

Even that doesn't make much sense. It is obvious that Apple would know that the accounts are linked.