I think the OP comes off pretty badly. None of this sounds like Apples fault to me.

When you put in account details, make damn sure everything is exactly as it should be.

Bank Form:

Account Holder:

Account Number:

Routing Code:

I filled out the form correctly. But Apple does not use whatever you specify as "account holder". They use the company name.

This.

It's so easy to screw up Apple's registration process, it actually pisses me off to see people that have never had business dealings with Apple trying to push the blame off to you, referencing some imagined "oh my god tax evasion" scenario that doesn't exist.

People: Apple is an unmitigated pain in the ass. They will not respond to your e-mails. They will brick-wall your support calls. Unless you are a large company, they will absolutely ignore your situation unless they are faced with legal, financial, and/or PR ramifications. If you are a large company, you might get someone on the phone, but you'll still find them to be a capricious and pig headed organization.

And why would they ever be different? When you're trying to evade tax or do something else screwy, or if you're not doing things properly.

Sorry to be harsh, but that's the way I see it.

Or they decide he's too much of a pain, refund the people that bought his app their $ and yank it.

After Amazons PR disaster when they retracted ebooks? Apple isn't that stupid.

That seems plausible, sure.

That sounds pretty unlikely. Why would they respond to a an issue that's already public with a move that would generate even more bad press? You know that right after that, you would see "Apple to Dev: All your revenues are belong to us" as the first item on the HN front page.

That depends on how you are looking at it. From Apples point of view this might look a bit shady, corporate account, private name, lots of changes. The app may be great but on Apples financial screens it's a mere blip.

If the OP had done his homework a bit better this whole issue would have never existed in the first place.

He's only acting like this now because his savings have run out.

BigCo (including Apple) eventually will pay, I'm sure they will. But if you start to make waves then all bets are off, it might work to your advantage, it might not. I would not go that route until I had tried a bunch of others, such as trying to get someone a bit higher up in the pecking order to look at it and break the gridlock.

They do that? That'd suck.