From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The Royal Bank of Canada terminated Freedom Convoy lawyer Eva Chipiuk’s accounts, saying her activity is outside its ‘client risk appetite’ and prompting accusations of political targeting.

The Royal Bank of Canada is shutting down a Freedom Convoy lawyer’s accounts over “risk concerns.”

In a July 23 post on X, Freedom Convoy layer Eva Chipiuk revealed that the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) terminated its banking relationship with her, citing “risk-related concerns” due to “recent activity” being outside their “client risk appetite.”

“As a federally regulated financial institution, RBC is required by law to comply with applicable legislation,” the letter, posted on X, read. “These laws require that we implement certain processes and procedures which directly support the formulation of RBC’s positions with respect to risk.”

“After careful consideration, we regretfully advise you that the recent activity in your accounts is outside of RBC’s client risk appetite, and consequently we are no longer in a position to continue our banking relationship with you,” it continued.

Well, I wasn’t expecting this, @RBC.

Welcome to Canada, where tyranny has great customer service. pic.twitter.com/yQI8QUs8pj

— Eva Chipiuk, BSc, LLB, LLM (@echipiuk) July 23, 2025

The decision followed a flagged Bitcoin transaction, after which RBC froze her account and asked her questions about her crypto activities, which she described to the Western Standard as “strange and demeaning.”

The bank gave her until August 18, 2025, to find a new financial institution, cryptically referencing compliance with federal regulations but providing no specific law or detailed explanation.

Chipiuk, who has been vocal about her criticism of Canadian institutions, suggested the debanking might be linked to her involvement in the Freedom Convoy or her public stance.

Many Canadians responded to the news online, calling out tyrannical government behavior and advocating for Canadians to invest their money in bitcoin and crypto currency.

“This is brazen and astonishing behavior by @RBC towards @echipiuk,” Ontario member of provincial parliament (MPP) Randy Hillier wrote on X.

“Eva is a well-known lawyer in Canada and has been debanked apparently because she is a ‘risk,’” he continued. “It appears that because she uses crypto and is a well known vocal advocate for freedom, she can’t have a bank account.”

“Please note! Everyone of the 5 Canadian bank owns a major stake in each other,” he warned. “Banks are becoming unsafe for Canadians and Credit unions are a safe and better alternative.”

This is brazen and astonishing behavior by @RBC towards @echipiuk.
Eva is a well-known lawyer in Canada and has been debanked apparently because she is a "risk."

It appears that because she uses crypto and is a well known vocal advocate for freedom, she can't have a bank… https://t.co/Z5JsShDkoI

— Randy Hillier (@randyhillier) July 23, 2025

The move is reminiscent of major Canadian banks freezing funds of those who donated to the 2022 Freedom Convoy, under the direction of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Under his invocation of the Emergencies Act, which was later ruled to be unjustified, the Trudeau government took the unprecedented step of freezing the bank accounts of hundreds who donated to and sympathized with the truckers to the tune of almost $8 million.

 Racket News

By Eric Salzman

The heavyweight champion of financial crime gets seemingly its millionth chance to show it’s reformed

The past two decades have been tough ones for Wells Fargo and the many victims of its sprawling crime wave. While the banking industry is full of scammers, Wells took turning time honored street-hustles into multi-billion dollar white-collar hustles to a new level.

The Federal Reserve announced last month that Wells Fargo is no longer subject to the asset growth restriction the Fed finally enforced in 2018 after multiple scandals. This was a major enforcement action that prohibited Wells from growing existing loan portfolios, purchasing other bank branches or entering into any new activities that would result in their asset base growing.

Upon hearing the news that Wells was being released from the Fed’s penalty box, my mind turned to this pivotal moment in the classic movie “Slapshot.”

Here are some of Wells Fargo’s lowlights both before and after the Fed’s enforcement action:

• December 2022: Wells Fargo paid more than $2 billion to consumers and $1.7 billion in civil penalties after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) found mismanagement — including illegal fees and interest charges — in several of its biggest product lines, such as auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts.
• September 2021: Wells Fargo paid $72.6 million to the Justice Department for overcharging foreign exchange customers from 2010-2017.
• February 2020: Wells Fargo paid $3 billion to settle criminal and civil investigations by the Justice Department and SEC into its aggressive sales practices between 2002 and 2016. About $500 million was eventually distributed to investors.
• January 2020: The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) banned two senior executives, former CEO John Stumpf and ex-Head of Community Bank Carrie Tolstedt, from the banking industry. Stumpf and Tolstedt also incurred civil penalties of $17.5 million and $17 million.
• August 2018: The Justice Department levied a $2.09 billion fine on Wells Fargo for its actions during the subprime mortgage crisis, particularly its mortgage lending practices between 2005 and 2007.
• April 2018: Federal regulators at the CFPB and OCC examined Wells’ auto loan insurance and mortgage lending practices and ordered the bank to pay $1 billion in damages.
• February 2018: The aforementioned Fed enforcement action. In addition to the asset growth restriction, Wells was ordered to replace three directors.
• October 2017: Wells Fargo admitted wrongdoing after 110,000 clients were fined for missing a mortgage payment deadline — delays for which the bank was ultimately deemed at fault.
• July 2017: As many as 570,000 Wells Fargo customers were wrongly charged for auto insurance on car loans after the bank failed to verify whether those customers already had existing insurance. As a result, up to 20,000 customers may have defaulted on car loans.
• September 2016: Wells Fargo acknowledged its employees had created 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts between 2002 and 2016 that “may not have been authorized by consumers,” according to CFPB. As a result, the lender was forced to pay $185 million in damages to the CFPB, OCC, and City and County of Los Angeles.

Additionally, somehow in 2023 Wells even managed to drop $1 billion in a civil settlement with shareholders for overstating their progress in complying with their 2018 agreement with the Fed to clean themselves up!

I imagine if Wells were in any other business, it wouldn’t be allowed to continue. But Wells is part of the “Too Big to Fail” club. Taking away its federal banking charter would be too disruptive for the financial markets, so instead they got what ended up being a seven-year growth ban. Not exactly rough justice.

While not the biggest settlement, my favorite Wells scam was the 2021 settlement of the seven-year pilfering operation, ripping off corporate customers’ foreign exchange transactions.

Like many banks, Wells Fargo offers its corporate clients with global operations foreign exchange (FX) services. For example, if a company is based in the U.S. but has extensive dealings in Canada, it may receive payments in Canadian dollars (CAD) that need to be exchanged for U.S. dollars (USD) and vice versa. Wells, like many banks, has foreign exchange specialists who do these conversions. Ideally, the banks optimize their clients’ revenue and decrease risk, in return for a markup fee, or “spread.”

There’s a lot of trust involved with this activity as the corporate customers generally have little idea where FX is trading minute by minute, nor do they know what time of day the actual orders for FX transactions — commonly called “BSwifts” — come in. For an unscrupulous bank, it’s a license to steal, which is exactly what Wells did.

According to the complaint, Wells regularly marked up transactions at higher spreads than what was agreed upon. This was just one of the variety of naughty schemes Wells used to clobber their customers. My two favorites were “The Big Figure Trick” and the “BSwift Pinata.”

The Big Figure Trick

Let’s say a client needs to sell USD for CAD, and that the $1 USD is worth $1.32 CAD. In banking parlance, the 32 cents is called the “Big Figure.” Wells would buy the CAD at $1.32 for $1 USD and then transpose the actual exchange rate on the customer statement from $1.32 to $1.23. If the customer didn’t notice, Wells would pocket the difference. On a transaction where the client is buying 5 million CAD with USD, the ill-gotten gain for Wells would be about $277,000 USD!

Conversely, if the customer did notice the difference, Wells would just blame it on the grunts in its operational back office, saying they accidentally transposed the number and “correct” the transaction. From the complaint, here is some give and take between two Wells FX specialists:

“You can play the transposition error game if you get called out.” Another FX sales specialist noted to a colleague about a previous transaction that a customer “didn’t flinch at the big fig the other day. Want to take a bit more?”

The BSwift Piñata

The way this hustle would work is, let’s say the Wells corporate customer was receiving payment from one of their Canadian clients. The Canadian client’s bank would send a BSwift message to Wells. The Wells client was in the dark about the U.S. dollar-Canadian dollar exchange rate because it had no idea what time of day the message arrived. Wells took advantage of that by purchasing U.S. dollars for Canadian dollars first. For simplicity, think of the U.S. dollar-Canadian dollar exchange rate as a widget that Wells bought for $1. If the widget increased in value, say to $1.10 during the day, Wells would sell the widget they purchased for $1 to the client for $1.10 and pocket 10 cents. If the price of the widget Wells bought for $1 fell to 95 cents, Wells would just give up their $1 purchase to the client, plus whatever markup they agreed to.

Heads, Wells wins. Tails, client loses.

The complaint notes that a Wells FX specialist wrote that he:

“Bumped spreads up a pinch,” that “these clients who are in the mode of just processing wires will most likely not notice this slight change in pricing” and that it “could have a very quick positive impact on revenue without a lot of risk.”

Talk about a boiler room operation. Personally, I think calling what you are doing to a client a “piñata” should have easily put Wells in the Fed’s penalty box another 5 years at least!

Wells has been released from the Fed’s 2018 enforcement order. I would like to think they have learned their lesson and are reformed, but I would lay good odds against it. A leopard can’t change its spots.