HOLLYWOOD—Adult star Chanel Preston's recent 86'ing by City National Bank due to her line of work continues to earn the bank ever more high-profile chastisement, now from TMZ Live, which interviewed Preston late Monday about her experience.
"This is just outrageous. This ... literally makes my blood boil," TMZ cheif Harvey Levin said before bringing Preston onto the show via Skype. (Wait—TMZ is outraged over a business' lack of morals? Just checking.)
Levin asked Preston to explain what had happened, and she recounted the story she previously told CNBC about learning her new City National account had been shut down due to "compliance issues" when she went in to deposit checks just days after opening it.
She went into a little further detail in this interview, saying, "The reasoning they gave me was fairly evasive, but I know it had something to do with the webcam option on my website, which has nothing to do with the bank. But they weren't very clear about what it was about the webcam. It sort of seemed as if for them it was sort of risky, like I was going to do risky, illegal activity on the webcam and they were not in control of that, but I don't see why that would be their responsibility. The webcam website takes their own precausions to alleviate illegal activity."
Levin then brought up JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s similar recent refusal to do business with softcore producer Marc L. Greenberg, and slammed that bank for its seemingly hypocritical practices. "A U.S. Treasury office of foriegn assets and control found that JPMorgan illegally aided dictatorships in Cuba, the Sudan, Liberia and Iran, including transferring 32,000 ounces of gold bullion for an Iranian bank," Levin quoted. "So that's OK, but it's not OK to loan money or have a bank account for a porn star.
"How screwed up is our country that we would allow banks to operate this way?" he continued. "Banks that we have given billions of dollars to to bail out for their mismanagement, banks that have bankrupted cities by bad financial advice, banks that have done horrible things to people, and they are saying this offends them."
Added Preston, "That's the thing, is they're discriminating against us, and when you do that you're making assumptions about people or industries, whereas there's so many industries or companies that are more unassuming and are really involved in illegal activities, so why are they making that assumption about us just because we have sex on film?"
"This is just absurd," Levin concluded. "This is absurd."
As a happy ending note to Preston's banking travails, she also announced yesterday via Twitter that Union Bank had contacted her personally to let her know that it is adult friendly. The only point of caution there, as she revealed in her next tweet, is that she has no idea how Union Bank got her number.
She Chanel Preston's full TMZ Live interview here, at the 13:48 mark.
Image courtesy of TMZ.com.
