HAWKINS, Wis.—A gun dealer here is alleging that the federal government, including NCUA, forced Heritage Credit Union to close his recently opened account because he’s in the business of legally selling guns.
However, the $270-million credit union said that version of events is not true, telling CUToday.info that the decision to close the account was not influenced by NCUA or any other federal agency or initiative. Instead, the credit union explained, the gun shop account was closed due concerns over its ability to comply with Bank Secrecy Act guidelines.
Mike Schuetz, the owner of Hawkins Guns LLC, a firearms store that sells both guns and ammunition, has audio tapes that he says support his claims, according to a report in Breitbart News, a conservative news and opinion website founded in 2007.
Those tapes, according to Breitbart News, allegedly indicate that a team of examiners put pressure on the CU to close the account. One of the recordings, posted on a website hosted by the organization United States Consumer Coalition, allegedly features a representative of Heritage Credit Union telling Schuetz, “You wouldn’t believe the regulations we have and when they came in and nailed us on that [accounts]. There were about a dozen of them crawling around the building.”
But Heritage CEO Anita Rauch told CUToday.info that Schuetz’s position is “inaccurate. The fact is we closed the account because we were not capable of effectively monitoring cash-intensive accounts. A CU of our size, we were told, has to have an automated process to monitor such accounts, which we did not at the time of the exam, and when Mr. Shuetz opened his account.”
CU Made Mistake
Rauch said a branch staff member made an error by opening the account.
Schuetz, a former probation and parole officer in this state, and an owner of a private investigation company along with the gun dealership, told Breitbart News he opened the account at the CU based in Madison, Wis., in November of 2014.
He said that a week after opening the account Heritage called him back and told him he had to close the account because “they do not service businesses that deal in guns, and they opened that account in error.”
“After that happened with Heritage,” Schuetz told Breitbart News, “I already had a business account opened with Nicolet National Bank in Phillips, Wis., for my private investigation business. The only reason I went to Heritage originally is that Phillips, where Nicolet is located, is 45 minutes away from my gun store and I wanted to make nightly deposits, and it’s not so safe to drive that far at night with cash and checks to deposit.”
Schuetz told Breitbart News that the NNB bank manager told him she had never heard of a bank refusing to open an account for a gun dealer, and that they would be “more than happy to have my business.”
The United States Consumer Coalition has posted several audio recordings allegedly made by Schuetz of his interaction with officials at Heritage Credit Union.
Rauch confirmed the recordings are from conversations between Schuetz and CU staff, but said they don’t tell the full story since they only share selected parts of the conversations.
“Examiners from NCUA came in and looked at our accounts…looked at our books,” one official of Heritage Credit Union is heard telling Schuetz on one of the tapes, the publication reported. “Here’s some accounts that we feel that we’re going to regulate you on…and kinda put the screws to us as far as what we could and couldn’t do. The regulatory and compliance issues that we said earlier are true. We never used to have to do that stuff…and our hands are tied by it.”
But suggesting that state or federal regulators had anything to do with the decision to close the account is, again, wrong, said Rauch, since the references on the audio tapes made by CU staff about NCUA examiners refer to the CU’s exam in August of 2014.
Schuetz Is Welcome Back
While Schuetz told Breitbart News the CU recently said they needed 90 days to “fix this” and he can open an account, Schuetz said he is hesitant to deal with Heritage now. Rauch told CUToday.info that the credit union’s systems will be able to handle cash-intensive accounts by the end of January and that Schuetz is welcome to come back.
When asked about the situation at Heritage, NCUA stated that it cannot comment on specifics of any matter involving credit union supervision.
“NCUA does not have a policy specific to any business, nor do we instruct a credit union about what individuals or businesses it can serve,” said spokesperson John Fairbanks. “The decision to open, close or decline an individual or business account generally lies with the credit union. As the provider of insurance coverage for members’ accounts, NCUA requires all those credit unions to evaluate risks posed by accounts and maintain the necessary capacity to effectively manage those risks.”