For a long time, banks began to want nothing to do with poker, mainly due to operation chokepoint by a one obama. The initial part of it was to essentially threaten banks to not deal with any "high risk" fields that the government did not want it to by imposing potentially large fines on the banks. Due to this, the banks began to laugh if poker players, or one of the other 30 fields tried to walk in and open a bank account with them.

Countless poker players have been left bankless or with lots of banks banning them in this span.

Well...in the past few weeks it has finally been overturned! Has anyone here attempted to open a bank account since? I wonder if it will be a straight 180 by the banks over night to accept poker money again or if it will take a while while they implement new processes.

Please post anything relevant or any attempts to open a bank account since this point while saying you play poker.


quoted from ocregister.com:

"The Trump administration deserves great praise for ending Operation Choke Point, the controversial, and often tyrannical, program that harmed many legitimate businesses.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation set the stage for the discriminatory treatment of businesses when it declared certain industries to be engaged in “high-risk” activities, sending a strong signal to the banks it regulates that they should steer clear of doing business with these entities. Then, in 2013, the Justice Department began implementing Operation Choke Point, essentially threatening banks and payment processing companies that do business with these “high-risk” merchants with federal investigations.

The government’s activities were purportedly intended to go after fraudulent operations such as Ponzi schemes, debt consolidation scams and cable box descramblers, but it also included many perfectly legal businesses like gun and ammunition dealers, coin dealers, tobacco dealers, payday lenders, dating services, fireworks sellers, travel clubs and suppliers of will-writing kits. As a result, many perfectly legitimate businesses were effectively cut off from banking, payroll, credit card processing and other financial services.

As a May 2014 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report explained, “Operation Choke Point effectively transformed the FDIC guidance into an implicit threat of investigation. Suddenly, doing business with a ‘high-risk’ merchant is sufficient to trigger a subpoena by the Department of Justice. Banks are put in an unenviable position: discontinue long-standing, profitable relationships with fully licensed and legal businesses, or face a potentially ruinous lawsuit by the Department of Justice.”"

Ok, the question is: does this give my local bank the ability to allow internet deposits or withdrawals from a net teller or directly from poker sites such as Stars ?

If I remember correctly the off shore sites were penalized for these transactions which the department of justice considered fraudulent; this was the thrust of the litigation, not the fact that poker, per se, was involved.

Is this what you're pointing to ?

It wasn't that they considered them fraudulent; they were made illegal by the UIGEA, which hasn't been repealed.

That's hard to say, some banks ban you now for having any poker transactions or btc. If you deposit alot of cash or get the wires they almost certainly ban you if you move alot. This was mainly due to them being scared by Obama's laws. Now that they don't face the penalties I would assume they would open their arms to get back all the business...but how long does it take in an outdated field like banking for all the higher ups to change policies regarding it?

I would be very curious to hear if anyone after this point says they play poker and are able to get an account opened at a large known banking chain.

Do you have a link to these laws?

UIGEA was passed in 2006 and Obama took office in 2008.

Yes, that was my point; perhaps it was yours too.

In his first post, OP talks about ending an "operation". I don't know if that's true or not, but at least it made sense. But he seems to have lost his way with his next post, where he talks about Obama's laws. I don't believe there were any relevant laws passed by Obama, which is why I asked OP for a link. And unless Trump quietly repealed the UIGEA (which would have to have been REALLY quiet), then his answer to carlo makes absolutely no sense. US banks' ability to allow withdrawals from Poker Stars and Neteller is unchanged, since neither one allows American customers. But even if they did, it's just as illegal for banks to allow those transactions now as it was before, unless there's been a UIGEA repeal, which of course there hasn't been.

Exactly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

Thread closed, as it has nothing to do with players' ongoing problems with funding their poker site accounts.