Operation Choke Point continues to create controversy. Legitimate businesses are being attacked by the Obama administration. Having experienced difficulty in shutting down small dollar credit lenders directly, the administration is targeting vendors and processors who “enable” lenders to serve their customers.
By Alan Zibel and Andrew R. Johnson
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened at least 10 civil and criminal investigations into whether banks and payment processing firms helped enable fraudulent activity, according to an internal Justice Department memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
More than 850 pages of internal documents on the DOJ’s probe of alleged fraud in the financial industry were obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The panel has been conducting an inquiry into the federal probe known as “Operation Choke Point,” which is aimed at reducing the ability of fraudulent businesses to operate by going after financial firms–like banks and payment processors–that help move their money.
The memos viewed by the Journal detail last year’s launch of the sweeping probe, which resulted in the government issuing subpoenas to about 50 banks and six payment processing firms, according to a November 2013 memo by DOJ official Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong.
Ms. Frimpong, in her memo, wrote that the government had the opened civil investigations into 10 banks and payment processors and was in settlement talks with three of them.
The DOJ has also opened criminal investigations of four payment-processing firms as well as one criminal investigation of a bank “and responsible bank officials.”
The names of affected banks were… Read More.
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Gun shops, payday loan companies, scrap gold stores, porn stars… what’s next? Whatever O’bama hates!
Shocking! Check this out to learn about all the industrues his administration has targeted: Choke Point
Operation Choke is unfair to the gun, porno, pot, payday loan, car title lending… industries. O’bama doesn’t like it so you have to go. Unless you owe your bank millions, your account will be cut off. It happened to me.
Thanks Jer, for raising this issue!
Bloake S.
If you were on an island with 2 inhabitants and your fellow island resident told you something was off limits to you, you would be incredulous. And yet, Bloomberg trys to dictate what size soft dring we can consume. O’bama wants to dictate guns, porno, loans, pot…
Man, I hope my ACH company is not one of these!!
Just go here for ACH: ACH for payday loan lenders