According to Brian J. Wise, senior adviser to the U.S. Consumer Coalition and managing partner at Wise Public Affairs, a Washington D.C.-based strategic advocacy firm, the government program Operation Choke Point has set its sights on the casino industry. A joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FDIC, the controversial program was designed to combat fraud in the marketplace, Wise said, but actually it is “about fundamentally changing the liability that banks have in the client relationship. In practical terms, the bank is no longer just responsible for knowing how the casinos, for instance, are getting their money, but now they are responsible for knowing how the casinos’ customers are getting their money.”
Wise noted “casinos already go to great lengths to prevent money-laundering or other financial fraud in their establishments.” He said Operation Choke Point will force banks to determine that doing business with casinos and the costs of compliance with the new standards “are too high, no matter how large their revenue line, and will end banking relationships, Automatic Clearing House processing and wire transfers.” In addition, Wise said, casinos will be forced to gather and share with banks “detailed personal information on every patron who plays at their property.”
Wise stated the situation could become worse by anti-gambling groups advocating that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “assert jurisdiction over the gaming industry” since casino credit products constitute short-term credit and are regulated under the Dodd-Frank Act. “This is the same strategy being used by the Obama administration to substantially reform, or destroy, the short-term loan industry and pawnshops,” Wise said. He added this “co-regulation” also has affected for-profit education companies, guns and ammunition sellers, multilevel marketing and pharmaceutical sales. “All of these industries were specifically identified on a list of ‘high-risk merchants’ by the FDIC, which after sharp criticism recently removed the list from its website,” Wise noted.
“The people who will end up getting hurt by this are the hard-working employees of casinos,” Wise concluded. “The casinos, the unions who represent their employees and the public at large must speak out to make it politically untenable for the Obama administration to mount this assault on our nation’s gaming industry and the people who support it.”
For more information, Wise directs interested persons to www.USConsumers.org.
