Bank of America Apparently No Longer Wants Negreanu's Business

Daniel Negreanu may be poker’s all-time money earner with $32,315,816 in tournament winnings, as well as one of the game’s most popular players, but that doesn’t seem to hold much sway with the Bank of America, which suddenly closed his accounts recently. As the Canadian superstar tweeted on December 22nd:
“Apparently Bank of America no longer wants my business. They are closing all my accounts because I put too much money in them from poker???”
After posting his message, other members of the poker community subsequently shared their own similar experiences of having their bank accounts shut for apparently deriving their income from playing poker. This included such prominent pros as Haralabos Voulgaris, Doug Polk, and Ankush Mandavia.
Evidently furthering his own research on the matter, Negreanu then related the issue back to a US Department of Justice project called Operation Choke Point, which is an initiative designed to scrutinize financial institutions for any potentially fraudulent activities. In this regard, online gambling has always attracted the attention of such departments as being a high risk category, despite having been legalized in the US states of Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey.
In addition to his bank account closure, Negreanu also had access to another source of money cut off after one of his credit cards was terminated. As he tweeted:
“MasterCard just cancelled my credit card for no reason whatsoever… And I’m rich! How dumb are they? Haha.”
Unfortunately for the poker world, such incidences are not rare and are likely only to continue into the future until the legal landscape concerning online poker is clarified in the US. Currently, online poker is allowed on a state-by-state basis providing legislation is first passed, whereas the game continues to be banned on a federal level.