BY HER own admission, Ashley Erickson had such limited dealings with her bank that her greatest failing as a customer might have been the nugatory profits she generated: no credit cards, no loans, just deposits from her employers and payments for her rent and her children’s gymnastic classes. But in mid-April she received a letter from Chase saying she was a “high-risk” customer and her account would be closed on May 11th. Ms Erickson responded by tweeting about her troubles to the 188,000 fans who follow her career as a stripper, under the name of Teagan Presley. They responded, she said, by complaining to Chase, which nonetheless advanced the closing date and shut down her husband’s account as well.

Many other people and firms have suffered similar snubs, thanks to “Operation Choke Point”, an anti-fraud campaign of America’s Justice Department—or so argues a scathing report released on May 29th by a congressional committee. It claims the operation was designed to strangle legitimate businesses that the government objects to for ideological reasons, such as payday lenders or gun dealers. The method is to deny them access to banks and payment systems, by prosecuting payment firms that abet suspect transactions.

The Justice Department, which has long feuded with the committee in question, rejects its findings. Any suggestion that the programme either targeted specific industries or legal businesses is untrue, says a spokesman. But just how Choke Point’s targets are identified and how banks can avoid getting tangled up in it is unclear. In response to demands from Congress, the Justice Department has provided 853 pages of presentations, e-mails and letters about it. Included is a memo from a strategy meeting last year which says, “Rather than attempting to stop fraud by prosecuting only fraudulent merchants, we seek to expand our focus to include that which is common to all consumer fraud schemes—the payment infrastructure”.

The congressional report’s contention is that banks, worried about appearing to turn a blind eye to possible fraud, are simply ceasing to do business with all firms in industries that regulators have identified as suffering from frequent legal problems. These include seemingly legitimate businesses such as selling ammunition, coins, medicine, magazine subscriptions, fireworks and tobacco, the report points out. As it goes on to say, “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.”

Banks are already submerged in numerous legal investigations and are paying huge fines for various infractions. Several of the biggest are operating under non-prosecution agreements; for these, even a minor legal infraction could open up a prior settlement, with dire consequences. Moreover, margins in retail banking are vanishingly thin. The revenue an individual client generates is likely to be dwarfed by the cost of an investigation. So banks have good reason to be supremely cautious in their interpretation of the law, even if it means tossing out blameless clients.

All these issues aside, however, the congressional report raises an even more vexing question: whether Operation Choke Point “inappropriately demands that bankers act as the moral arbiters and policemen of the commercial world”. The banks’ own legal travails suggest they are not obvious candidates for the job.