ListingsNearbyReviewsWhat's NewTop 40ArticlesDiscussionsForumsUnpublished ReviewsUnpublished Articles

Operation Choke Point terminated... good news for clubbers

azrookie
Arizona
Flying under most people's radar and widely under-reported by the the press, the Obama Holder DOJ launched a program several years ago called Operation Choke Point (OCP). It worked like this. DOJ targeted 30 industries that the Obama administration unilaterally designated as "high risk" to banks. The alleged risk was "reputation risk." The OCP list included business such as ammunition sales, escort services, get-quick-rich schemes, on-line gambling, “racist materials” and payday loans. Small FFL dealers were a particular target. The DOJ would pressure banks to discontinue providing financial services to these targeted businesses. The ultimate goal was to financially starve these companies. Banks that failed to cooperate with OCP were threatened with extreme scrutiny from the DOJ and bank regulators. The Trump DOJ announced this week that OCP was nothing more than a tool to target politically unpopular yet legitimate, licensed businesses and the program is formally terminated.

Why bring this up on tuscl? Two reasons. I would imagine that most strip club owners are small business guys who depend heavily on access to lines of credit and banking services to run their enterprises. I would imagine that a overactive DOJ would lump strip clubs in a broadly defined escort/sex industry/porn category that is targeted by OCP. Choking off access to banking services could be fatal to the strip club.

Second reason. About four weeks ago, I stopped into my local club on a Sun afternoon. One of my regular fave dancers comes over to chat. As we talk, she tells me that her bank just informed her that she was no longer welcome to bank with them. The bank gave her no reason for closing her accounts. She was now trying to shop for a new place to do her banking. I suspect that the pattern of bank transactions a stripper conducts would raise a red flag, particularly the regular stream of cash deposits. Add to that she is SE Asian, here on a green card and send tons of money back to her family offshore. I was puzzled why the bank kicked her account to the curb, but this news about OCP connects the dots rather well.

15 comments

Latest

etsutwigg222
•
7 years ago
Great insight to the work the "Chicago" machine has been conducting for the last eight years. Notice no outrage in the media about this activity. Stay tuned for more and more reports exposing the divisive activities that were practiced the past 8 years.
JohnSmith69
•
7 years ago
DS II was justifiably worried about how a bank and the govt might react to her depositing her stripping income. To help her out, instead of paying her cash, I used to just pay off her bills. In the year plus that we fucked, I paid off two student loans in full and one more in part.

skibum609
•
7 years ago
The simple fact is that Obama was just as much a dictatorial piece of shit as the current asshole piece of shit in the whitehouse. Hate to clue all y'all in, but the Federal Government is the enemy of the people.
Cashman1234
•
7 years ago
The sad truth is that anybody who conducts business on solely a cash basis can raise red flags simply due to the size of the deposits. If the cash deposits are then wired to offshore locations - additional red flags can be raised. These are both indications of structuring payments and they can be indicative of a money laundering operation. Even though dancers are earning their income legally, they can accidentally create patterns that a regulator might see and flag. The regulators might have no idea how the money was earned, and they might not care, as they see a pattern that might have characteristics of structuring - and they will direct the local bank manager to terminate the relationship.
mark94
•
7 years ago
Trump is the only President who owned a strip club ( as part of a casino ).
Call.Me.Ishmael
•
7 years ago
I hated OCP. It was a blatant overreach that hurt legitimate businesses.

That said, I highly doubt it came into play against a single dancer. That dancer could have been doing any number of things to make the bank nervous (justifiably or not).
Lurker_X
•
7 years ago
All banks have to demonstrate know-your-customer compliance. They voluntary contribute information with Federal agencies when transactions look suspicious.
vincemichaels
•
7 years ago
Hmm, your stripper must have been making major, major deposits to trigger alerts if that was the case. PL's must make her standard of living great.
twentyfive
•
7 years ago
^^^Actually it really doesn't take that much money its more the ratio of cash, to overall deposits that triggers the alerts. If you were to deposit 5-10K a month all in cash and not have a TIN just a SS number on your account, they might assume that you were operating a business under the radar not necessarily, something actually illegal, local governments might want to see a sales tax deposit with that, or the regulators might advise the bank manager that this particular depositor could be a problem. Of course if you are sending MOs or WTs out of the country that would trigger an automatic alert.
vincemichaels
•
7 years ago
Unless it has changed, the threshold was $10 K at one time, to have an alert sent.
sharkhunter
•
7 years ago
Obama did bad things. Trump says bad things and made me lose a lot in the stock market with all his fear and fire warning. Now all it takes is one missile fired in the wrong spot and half the world thinks nukes might go flying. I'm still much more aligned with Trumps policies on tax cuts, etc if he ever gets stuff through congress. Still hasn't gotten rid of health care tax penalties after almost a year. Some think we will be at war with NK in less than a tear because people don't take him seriously. Yep, that's how wars start. No one knows if trump is bluffing or if he will nuke NK. Since he's already decimated my savings, I think he will drop bombs sooner or later in response to NK shooting missiles at Guam. The US could shoot missiles over NK air space landing in the ocean and see how much they like that. Hopefully it would be a cheap missile. South Korea could evacuate cities near NK. I read NK might interpret that move as a prelude to war and invade. What could go wrong? We could wait a few years and let NK threaten to nuke US cities like LA, NY, Chicago, etc. with several missiles, a few would hit.

We just need to send a big fleet of Asgard tech loaded space ships over NK and enact force fields to stop all projectiles and missiles and then vaporize their missiles and artillery and impress the hell out of the rest of the world with our secret tech.
joc13
•
7 years ago
I have started doing electronic transfers with my SB and OTC girls that make it to the "I trust you a decent amount" level.

I realize that I give up a little bit of anonymity, but it's worth it in terms of me not having to withdraw/handle so much cash, and the very creative and adventurous ways in which they show appreciation when I can "help out" quickly.
zef8mich
•
7 years ago
I heard the 10K threshold was used to spot illegal activity. Way back someone like a famous musician might be the one to accidentally trigger an alarm.
twentyfive
•
7 years ago
The 10K threshold is a different kind of alert than what I was referring to. That is mainly used to identify drug transactions and/or other types of illegal activities, My understanding of OCP was to identify tax evasion.
impala
•
7 years ago
The threshold for deposit were changed to 2k about two years ago. I was told was to "help curb" the opioids epidemic by preventing low level intermediate traffickers from being able to transfer money back to their bosses, at least that was the intent. Personally I feel that the Obama DOJ used it to be able to ...... well, we all know what they wanted, CONTROL
You must be a member to leave a comment.Join Now
Got something to say?
Start your own discussion