Cheri DeVille, Genevieve LeJeune And “Debanking”

It may surprise you to know that, even with a legal job, banks can refuse to carry your money. Traditional American financial institutions have been receiving plenty of flak recently from adult creators who are being told to find another bank. Officially called debanking, the practice is rooted in outdated views on adult content and it’s riling up adult creators everywhere. 

Cheri DeVille is a 47 year-old porn industry veteran who’s made thousands of videos over the years, all perfectly legal and above board. Yet, Bank of America, after years of having her as a customer, has decided they’re no longer storing her earnings.

The reason? According to DeVille, Bank of America 86’ed her “not because I committed fraud or did something illegal, not because I owe them money, but because I’m an adult content creator. That’s it. That’s the entire reason.” DeVille and other notable figures in the industry feel like they’re being treated as criminals, despite the undoubtedly legitimate nature of their work. 

Genevieve LeJeune founded Skirt Club, a community centered around bisexual and bi-curious women. Skirt Club puts on all kinds of events around the world, including the occasional orgy. She says British bank HSBC, out of nowhere, froze all of her assets and shut down her accounts. HSBC never explained why they did this to LeJeune, but she blames the increasing popularity of Skirt Club’s orgies, surmising the bank didn’t want to be involved in handling the profits from those events. 

Tess Herrmann is a researcher at National Ugly Mugs, a British charity for sex workers. She says she’s seen a lot of head-scratching moves and discrimination against sex workers from financial institutions in recent years. “We see a lot of discrimination, specifically from banks and financial institutions, where sex workers are not able to open business accounts even though their escort business is a business, but it’s not seen as such.” She’s even seen sex workers’ personal bank accounts taken down and plenty of loan denials. “The stigma surrounding sex work affects every part of a sex worker’s life, which includes their financial life, their financial decisions and their access to financial services.” 

In the United Kingdom, sex work is legal. Storing the proceeds from sex work is also legal and is nowhere close to money laundering. It’s the lack of regulation that sends banks running with their tails between their trillion dollar legs. Banks have argued in the past that, despite its legality, sex work is unmonitored and largely unregulated. So they can’t be 100% sure the money is coming from legal work and not trafficking or pimping.

For an industry that makes a big fuss about lack of regulations in the sex work world, most financial institutions themselves have no policies dealing with how to handle money made from adult work. As a result, each institution evaluates on a case-by-case basis, leaving a lot of legitimate sex workers in the lurch. Banks could accept their money and take the chance, or they could label their prospective client as “high-risk” (which makes it harder for the client to find a bank anywhere) and move on. As a bottom line, sex workers in Britain are trying to avoid being pushed out of legitimate financial institutions and into underground markets, like crypto or gift cards. 

Recently, in the United States, the White House signed an executive order mandating that banks are required to give banking access to people operating legal businesses, regardless of an institution’s opinion of their line of work. While it wasn’t aimed at adult creators specifically, it could help them fight against unjust asset seizures. For now, Cheri DeVille says she was able to find another bank, though she says “not everybody has that privilege.”