@BT

Did you ever run across a retail branch manager willing to tell you how it’s done?

IG carpet store owner pissed off commercial lender by reneging on deal to give him deal of a lifetime…commercial lender walks over to retail desk…how do I shut his ass down? Retail branch manager pulls up account for review and flags it for possible churning or floating and boom two days later mr carpet guy has his loan called and between 30-60 days depending on account type & flag to close accounts.

Since this gets run as part of batch during the evenings routine TOS violations scan …nobody is gonna say anything more definitive than it was flagged during routine TOS scan.

Chase isn’t gonna say why or what specifically caused them to flag accounts but I can damn sure bet it won’t be the real reason…somebody for what ever reason got a bug up their ass.

Ps. It hasn’t changed much from when banking was limited to counties in the mid 80s

Maybe there is some California exception – I’ve reported on this at the national level and never got into the minutia of individual states. But given the amount of escorting in porn, the potential for under the table money, and the reported problems with websites ripping off consumers or using their sites as a pretext to attack consumers with viruses, can you blame a financial institution for saying this is a risk we don’t want to take?

I can’t imagine the jury that’s sympathetic to an actress whose running a webcam and escorting on the side – all of which would be fair game in a deposition.

This is not to say it’s right. I still think Chase sucks, but from a shareholder standpoint I’m not exactly sure I would want that risk either… it seems like the same circumstances that surround porn stars and health insurance. The risk is huge which is why getting health insurance is impossible or expensive…

Does a bank want to risk getting hit with illegal activity violations? Just another example of why porn isn’t “legal” across the country. I’m going to guess if the Bunny Ranch had Chase accounts they probably weren’t closed… that would be interesting see… which sex worker accounts were closed and which ones remained open? At least it would give a clue as to which segments they considered high risk?

The facts have to revolve around legal, financial and/or risk policy… not personal feelings. Being gay, black, female, etc. isn’t connected to any particular “industry.” Especially one with a long history of illegal activity.

I still say fuck Chase. Capital One and BOA can suck it too….

Financial institutions, including banks and insurance companies, use a lot of data points beyond the ones that would lead to a discrimination suit by a protected class (age, sex, religion, etc.) to decline to do business or do business under onerous terms. Insurance companies will use your FICA score and credit worthiness to set your auto insurance rates, for instance. The theory is that a guy with a bad credit rating might total his vehicle or burn down his house for the payout.

Porn isn’t a protected class – financial institutions, I believe, can make a determination that the risk from doing business with them is greater than the risk of not doing business with them. Even if there is a suit, in the end, its cheaper and easier to just find another financial institution.

If the response to that is: Yes, but none of them want to do business with porn, that tells you how unlikely it is that a suit will prevail.

They enter varied TOS flags that can indicate illegal or suspect activity. Every account that got a closure letter has at least one activity present, doesn’t matter if it’s on the up and up, it’s a valid reason to close the accounts.

During the search it was interesting to glance at Michigan Muslims who had 50 plus account closures who concluded it would be easier to fight for Federal regulation than sue the banks. Their assumption was that terrorist funding prevention was behind their account closures.

With that I stand by original assumption that these accounts were flagged as underground economy.

The depositor agreement is the paper(s) you got a copy of the day you opened account and is usually updated at least annually with a notice in statement.

Having been on the banking end everything Fatterosi is saying is true and my guess on how it would play out…Chase will defend this by saying that they have a fiduciary right to protect other depositors by limiting their exposure.

The best I can see coming out of this is a long protracted fight that results in high risk pool banking with a separate fee structure similar to auto/life or home insurance.

As individuals they may be able to prove their record is okay but as a class this gets very ugly because the members have to overcome the reality that too many fiscally irresponsible peers have caused a risk that resulted in losses to the bank.

My guess is that these account closures are part of a new or little known regulation to stem the underground economy which isn’t covered by any discrimination laws.