Category Archives: Payday Loan

Native American Tribal Indian Payday Loans Found to Be Operating Illegally

The Federal Trade Commission has taken action against a payday lending operation that allegedly piled on undisclosed and inflated fees, and collected on loans illegally by threatening borrowers with arrest and lawsuits. The FTC has asked a federal court to stop the allegedly illegal business tactics while the agency pursues its case against the defendants. [...]

Active Duty Soldier Loses Truck to Title Loan Lender and Why This is News

Jason Cox, an active duty Army Staff Sargent has filed suit against Community Loans of America and Alabama Title Loans over the repossession of his truck. “Big deal,” you might say. But this case does bring up some bigger issues. Active duty military service members are protected by what is called the Military Lending Act [...]

Danger! Payday Loans are a Weapon of Mass Destruction

According to Wikipedia weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large numbers of humans (and other life forms) and/or cause great damage to man-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere in general. WMD’s can harm innocent people and there’s no stopping [...]

Minnesota Sues Payday Lenders

This past week, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson filed separate lawsuits against five Internet lenders that made loans to cash-strapped Minnesota borrowers that were marketed as providing “cash between paydays,” but that contained unlawfully high annual interest rates of up to 782% percent and that were often illegally extended from paycheck to paycheck, trapping the [...]

Your Local Bank May Become Your New Payday Lender

National Consumer Law Center has uncovered a spreading Main Street bank trend in the payday lending world. Back in 2008 I had written an article about Kinceta Federal Credit Union in California that felt being in the payday loan business was good for their customers. At the time, the thought that a bank or credit [...]

Payday Lender Nailed by FTC for Fooling People

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court has halted an online operation that allegedly debited consumers’ bank accounts without their consent when consumers visited the defendants’ websites seeking payday loans. The court also froze the defendants’ assets, pending further court proceedings. As part of its continuing efforts to protect financially strapped [...]

Payday Loans: How Quick Is A Quick Solution?

On March 31, 2011 The Center for Responsible Lending put out a publication entitled “Payday Loans, Inc.: Short on Credit, Long on Debt” where they featured a recent study of payday loan borrowers. The CRL tracked 11,000 Oklahoma payday loan borrowers for 24 months from the date of their first loan and revealed their findings [...]

Moneymaker Charged With Tricking People Into Seeking Payday Loans Billed Without Consent

Bruce Moneymaker, Mike Smith, Michael Bruce Millerd, Fortress Secured, Daniel de la Cruz, Belfort Capital Ventures, Dynamic Online Solutions, HSC Labs, and Seaside Ventures Trust were all charged with unfairly and deceptively billing consumers without their consent, and not providing promised refunds, in violation of federal law. At the FTC’s request, a federal court temporarily [...]

BillFloat.com – A Great Alternative to Payday Loans

This year at SXSW I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing Ryan Gilbert from BillFloat.com speak at the “Dawn of the Data: Future of Consumer Lending” panel. Ryan spoke of his service BillFoat.com, an alternative to payday loan lending. I remember sitting in my seat, surrounded by other finance thirsty attendees thinking, “wow, this [...]

Online Payday Loan Provider Impact Cash Charged as a Ponzi.

The SEC just filed suit against John Scott Clark, Impact Cash, and Impact Payment Systems. The suit alleges Clark and Impact, which operated an online payday loan business, effectively lured investors in and took their money. From March 2006 to September 2010, Impact and Clark raised more than $47 million from 120 investors to run [...]

Payday Loan Marketers Who Tricked Consumers With Christian Faith Financial Settle With the FTC

Two men who operated a service, using websites including Christian Faith Financial (source), matching borrowers with potential lenders will pay $800,000 and the proceeds from the sale of a house to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they tricked hundreds of thousands of payday loan applicants into paying for an unrelated debit card. The FTC [...]

TSA Employees More Likely to Have Money Troubles and Bad Credit

An awesome tipster sent in a recent government report on payday lending contained some interesting facts about the financial health of government security/law enforcement employees. It also contained this gem of a chart showing how banks are profiting more and charging much higher interest rates than payday lenders are. If we use the prevalence of [...]

The States Most Loaded With Payday Lenders – Map.

Click on map for larger version. The Center for Responsible Lending, a group that I really admire, recently published a map of payday loan shops showing density by population. Interesting. @GetOutOfDebtGuy

FBI Pissed About Phony Debt Collectors of Payday Loans Pretending to be FBI Agents

Last December I first covered the problem with fake debt collectors calling to allegedly collect on past due payday loans. See “Frightening Calls From Fake Debt Collectors Threaten People With Jail for Payday Loans. It’s a Scam.” Well apparently now the scammers are saying they are FBI Agents. Interesting move. Not smart. The FBI has [...]

Illegal Internet Payday Loans From Government Employees Credit Center and Dollar Financial Hit Snag in WV

West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw launched another volley recently in his office’s campaign to stop usurious Internet payday loans in West Virginia, seeking $3.9 million in penalties from Government Employees Credit Center, Inc., (GECC) and the Dollar Financial Group for making and collecting illegal payday loans in contempt of a court order. Attorney General [...]