Posted on 05/01/2014 10:51:50 AM PDT by jazusamo
Porn stars say that JP Morgan Chase bank has been quietly closing their bank accounts.
The skin flick starlets, including Penthouse Pet Teagan Presley, “Cougarland” actress Veronica Avluv and “White House Orgy” actress Layton Benton, are using Twitter to bash the bank over a recent rash of account closure notices.
Presley, whose real name is Ashley Erickson, said her April 16 letter gave no reason for her termination. The bank also is closing her husband’s personal account and their two business accounts, including one for their studio Skinworxxx, she said.
“I’m just upset and still in shock it’s even happening. I’m not doing anything illegal,” Presley told the Daily News.
Porn is a declining but lucrative industry, not so much for those on screen, but it’s still a billion dollar industry.
It’s apparently one of about 30 industries that the US Justice Department is choking out of banks to shut them down entirely via Operation Choke Point, according to Vice News .
In 2011, the FDIC listed 30 “ merchant categories that have been associated with high-risk activity ,” likening pornography to Ponzi schemes, racist materials, “lifetime guarantees,” and sales of fireworks and tobacco.
But it’s Operation Choke Point that researchers say is the force behind banks threatening to close payday lenders’ accounts unless they go out of business.
At a March hearing before a Senate Banking subcommittee, the Washington Post reported, Senator David Vitter (R-La.) said “there is a determined effort, from [the Justice Department] to the regulators… to cut off credit and use other tactics to force [payday lenders] out of business. I find that deeply troubling because it has no statutory basis, no statutory authority.”
The FDIC lists the 30 industries that have been targeted. They are:
- Ammunition Sales
- Cable Box De-scramblers
- Coin Dealers
- Credit Card Schemes
- Credit Repair Services
- Dating Services
- Debt Consolidation Scams
- Drug Paraphernalia
- Escort Services
- Firearms Sales
- Fireworks Sales
- Get Rich Products
- Government Grants
- Home-Based Charities
- Life-Time Guarantees
- Life-Time Memberships
- Lottery Sales
- Mailing Lists/Personal Info
- Money Transfer Networks
- On-line Gambling
- PayDay Loans
- Pharmaceutical Sales
- Ponzi Schemes
- Pornography
- Pyramid-Type Sales
- Racist Materials
- Surveillance Equipment
- Telemarketing
- Tobacco Sales
- Travel Clubs
It seems that rather than go to the trouble of passing laws to target industries that the government has deemed politically incorrect, or even getting a regulation through an agency that can later be challenged in court, the government is simply leaning on banks to cut off accounts. Over time, if enough banks cooperate, these industries would go away or at least be forced farther underground.
There are certainly some skeevy, but legal, industries on that list: telemarketers, purveyors of racist materials, and so forth. And isn’t it strange that while some states are legalizing pot, the FDIC is targeting tobacco sales?
Two of the items on the list ought to rise even more concern than the closure of porn star bank accounts: ammunition sales and firearm sales.
Law-abiding, non-porn star Americans purchase both firearms and ammunition online every single day. Not only are they part of a legal industry, they are part of a legal industry that is enshrined in the Constitution as a civil right. The Obama administration has been hostile to the Second Amendment from the beginning, and President Obama himself infamously told gun control supporters at the Brady Center that he was working on their behalf “under the radar.”
Was Operation Choke Point the “under the radar” scheme that he was talking about? Is Operation Choke Point part morality police, part skeevy government game to disarm Americans?
If a porn star decides to sue JP Morgan Chase for closing their account, the discovery process should turn up some very interesting stuff.
The lawlessness continues in the Banana Republic of America.
I wonder if there is an Islamic componant in these cancellations.
You might be on to something, that never crossed my mind. It makes some sense now.
I miss the rule of law.
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