Bella Cummins has run Bella’s Hacienda Ranch, her Nevada brothel, for nearly four decades — and for four decades, she has been shunned by much of the banking industry.
She has been denied a mortgage and several other loans, while many of her employees have had to wait up to two weeks for their paychecks to clear.
“Despite being a legal establishment, there is, of course, still a stigma attached to the work,” Cummins, 74, said from Wells, Nev., the only state where prostitution is legal in certain counties. “There is no bank in Nevada that will lend money to a brothel. So, unlike other businesses, we actually have to make the money to spend the money.”
Workers in sex-related industries — whether in a brothel or a strip club or selling sexually explicit videos online — often risk their safety and face social and employment discrimination. But a lesser-known struggle is that it’s often difficult to maintain a basic bank account and other financial relationships that most people take for granted.
Banks are shutting down what appear to be an increasing number of customer accounts, usually with little explanation, throwing their customers’ lives into chaos. The closures have hit small-business owners who routinely deposit cash, individuals who withdrew larger sums than usual and others who unknowingly transacted with suspected fraudsters, The New York Times has found. But those who work in sex-related industries say they have long lived under that threat of eviction.
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