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by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com

Here we go again!

If you didn’t hear this story last year, then buckle up because it’s happening again. But on a larger scale and worse in so many ways.

Chase Bank has apparently decided to close quite a few bank accounts…and they all belong to people in the adult film industry.

If you’ll recall, around this time last year, a lawsuit was filed against JPMorgan Chase claiming the bank violated fair lending laws and its policy for refusing to underwrite a loan for ‘moral reasons.’

In the past, the vast majority of “moral ground” account closures have been done to adult industry producers and distribution companies. This, however, is different as the reportedly hundreds of terminated account letters went out not to studios, but individual porn stars, saying their accounts would be closed on May 11, 2014.

Specifically, Chase Bank has reportedly sent out letters to hundreds of porn stars notifying them that their accounts would be closed on May 11, Perez Hilton reported today. Teagan Presley confirmed to XBIZ that her personal account was one of the ones shut down.

“I got a letter and it was like please cancel all transactions, please fix your automatic pay account and make sure everything’s taken care of by May 11,” Presley told XBIZ. “I called them and they told me that because I am, I guess, public and am recognizable in the adult business, they’re closing my account. Even though I don’t use my account, it’s my personal account that I’ve had since I was 18, when it was Washington Mutual before Chase bought them out.”

Read on…

One of the letters, posted here, succinctly informs the recipient of the impending closure without citing specific reasons.

“We recently reviewed your account and determined that we will be closing it on May 11, 2014,” the letter reads. “Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.”

Then, continuing in a more “compassionate” vein, “We want you to have enough time to complete pending transactions and open an account at another bank.”

And yet, when Presley went to Bank of America to open up a new account, she was summarily turned away.

Presley said she did not use her Chase account for adult-related purchases, only for groceries, rent and utility payments and her children’s’ gymnastic lessons. Sometimes she would deposit checks from strip clubs, Fleshlight and other adult companies.

“I can understand if I had some checks that bounced or if I wrote checks that bounced, or anything like that, or I was charging stuff to a lot of adult companies, but I just don’t have anything like that on my account,” Presley added.

Adult industry attorney Michael Fattorosi told XBIZ that Chase and other banks have “notoriously closed adult accounts or people in the industry’s accounts, but nothing like this.”

“Throughout my practice I’ve had clients that have had their bank accounts closed, once the bank recognizes or determines that they’re in the adult industry. I’ve seen that on numerous occasions,” he said. “What I’ve never seen is a bank taking a position and sending out mass letters.”

Fattorosi noted that it is yet unclear, however, how many people’s account were actually shut down.

Last year a lawsuit was filed against JPMorgan Chase by Marc Greenberg, founder of the soft porn studio MRG Entertainment, for allegedly violating fair lending laws by refusing to underwrite a loan for “moral” reasons.

Chanel Preston also faced a similar predicament last year when City National Bank shut down her business account due to “compliance issues,” without any notification whatsoever.

The question that comes to mind here is how Chase is identifying their customers that are adult performers. With just a few notable exceptions, most porn stars appear in films under a stage name. In order to open a bank account, one needs to use their given name. So, how is Chase putting two and two together that customer “Jane Smith” is also a porn star going by the name of “Betty Bukkake”? Facebook and Google+ facial recognition. perhaps? Access to the pornwikileaks stolen database that outed the real names of hundreds of performers? Or, maybe something as simple as depositing checks written to them by one of the major brand name porn studios. Who knows!

But, for the hard-working adult performers in our industry, this is just another slap in the face from corporate America for doing something totally legal, but somehow too icky for the banking boardrooms to tolerate.