Bank of America Freezes Gun Manufacturer's Account

[JohnC]

Bank of America has reportedly frozen the account of gun manufacturer American Spirit Arms, according to its owner, Joe Sirochman.

In a Facebook post dated December 29, Sirochman wrote the following:

“My name is Joe Sirochman owner of American Spirit Arms...our Web site orders have jumped 500 percent causing our Web site e-commerce processing larger deposits to Bank of America. So they decided to hold the deposits for further review.
Rest of article here.

http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-wi ... ner-claims

[LarryP]

Wow. This has gone waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to far. Can't we sue since our rights are being violated by these banks & companies.

Seems everyone else sues when someone looks at them funny. Wish gun owners & mfgr's could fight back.

[Hmac]

I'd certainly be interested to hear the other side of the story.

[TTS]

I'd certainly be interested to hear the other side of the story.

They did something similar to McMillian

[MasonK]

Duplicate post.

[MasonK]

Between Sarbanes-Oxley, Graham-Leech-Bliley, and a whole host of other laws which clamp down on banks, BOA very much clamps down on a lot of things that look funny because of regulations and fear of Federal lawsuits.

Is there a potential for abuse? absolutely. But if regulators get one whiff of potential crime and a bank doesn't do something, they are liable for not reporting it, and in some cases, not figuring it out. Some of the regs make the banks responsible for detecting potential crimes an turning them over to the authorities.

It sucks for business, especially ones that deal in a lot of cash transactions because it looks like money laundering.

[M4A1]

Why does anyone still do business with BofA? Someone please enlighten me...

[Hmac]

I'd certainly be interested to hear the other side of the story.

They did something similar to McMillian

Bank of America says they have no policy against firearms mfgrs (google Ann Pace). And they were a co-issuer of a $250 million note to Freedom Group in April.

Both the McMillan story and the one quoted above are reports by an Internet blog of something posted on Facebook. In neither story was comment sought by the blogger from Bank of America. Hardly qualifies as any kind of "journalism".

I have no love for BofA, don't bank with them or anything. Maybe the story is true, maybe not, but I'm suspicious of one-sided Internet rumors from Facebook, blogs, and Internet gun forums.

[sigsauersauce]

Between Sarbanes-Oxley, Graham-Leech-Bliley, and a whole host of other laws which clamp down on banks, BOA very much clamps down on a lot of things that look funny because of regulations and fear of Federal lawsuits.

Is there a potential for abuse? absolutely. But if regulators get one whiff of potential crime and a bank doesn't do something, they are liable for not reporting it, and in some cases, not figuring it out. Some of the regs make the banks responsible for detecting potential crimes an turning them over to the authorities.

It sucks for business, especially ones that deal in a lot of cash transactions because it looks like money laundering.

+1 on this. I've worked for big banks and smaller financial institutions and I can say this is definitely the case. They banks absolutely have to play a giant game of cya whenever someone's regular banking activity starts to drift out of the norm. A large increase in sales volume leading to larger than normal deposits absolutely qualifies as such. BofA would find themselves in tremendous regulatory as well as legal hot water if it turned out that those increased deposit volumes stemmed from some kind of illegal activity, so they are only doing their due diligence here. Nothing to crucify them over.

That being said, there's plenty of other reasons to hate BofA. Gotta love the repercussions of 2008.