The Payday Loan Industry Is Bastards All The Way Down

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hmm, what's lansing my boils? I'm Robert Evans. This is
Behind the Bastards, the show where I talk about terrible
people and try out a new intro every week. Sharine,
what what did you think of that one? Is that?
Is that a winner? Yeah? I'm cringing just so. I
think an emotional reaction is what you wanted, and you've

(00:21):
got it. Yeah. Yeah, and we've we've done extensive market
testing and our our listeners are are huge fans of
boils and in lansings of boils. Uh, Sophie. Sophie brought
that info to me last week, so we're trying to
play to that demo. Yeah, I mean, I haven't thought
about boils in a long time. I'm glad you brought
that back to my to my attention. You know that
they're they're disgusting. Make boils be on Sharine's mind again.

(00:46):
I suppose we've kind of spoiled the fact that our
guest today is is Sharine Lanna Units from the Ethnically
Ambiguous podcast. Sharine, you've got any other plugs to plug
up at the start? That's me. That's all I got.
Follow me on the socials and that's all about that's
about it. Here six there we go, follow Sharine on

(01:07):
the socials. Now Sharine, Today we're talking about the payday
loan industry. Have you ever had to use a payday loan? Uh? Fortunately? No,
good good, I have not either. Um. It's a it's
a it's a pretty messed up thing. And today we're
going to talk about it for like an hour or so.
So I cannot wait for you to teach me all

(01:29):
about this thing I know nothing about. Excellent. Well, everyone buckling,
strap your strap, your listening chairs on, throw on your
you're here in goggles, and uh, prepare to be taken
on a journey into the payday loan industry. That was
That was beautiful. Thank you, thank'd The Magic school Bus. Yes,

(01:49):
I like to think of every episode of this show
as like an episode of the Magic school Bus. But
Miss Frizzle is drunk and abusive. Um, are you saying
that you are drunken abusive? Yes? Oh, and you're imagine
that Miss Frizzle is drunk abusive and just has a gun. Yeah,
I mean I do, I do have a yeah, but no, yeah,

(02:11):
I hope that the rest of the audience is kind
of not the most informed about this topic because I
kind of like being a pleab surrounded by pleabs, and
you can be the misfrizzle, you know. Yeah, and I was.
I was the pleab until about seventy two hours ago
when I started reading about this. So, yeah, exactly, this
is the This is the slightly less blind leading the

(02:33):
blind into the land of eyeglasses. I kind of lost
the thread of that metaphor. We're in the magic school
of us. Where are we going. We're going into a
paid a loan We're going into We're going into a
paid a loan store. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to
start by asking people to think about how weird it
is that workers have to wait weeks, if not months,

(02:54):
to get paid for the work that they do. Theoretically,
your employer and benefits from your labor as soon as
you do it, whether you're driving an uber, managing a bank,
or using a drone to fire missiles and insurgents, or
wedding parties in rural Afghanistan, but you, the laborer, don't
actually get paid for your work until long after you
do it. This is such a normal, accepted part of
our system that I don't think most of us ever
really talk about it much, and this peculiarity in our

(03:17):
labor market has led to the creation of an entire,
mighty industry. The business of paid a loans short term lending,
as it prefers to be called by its friends and family,
got its start in the United States in the late
eighteen hundreds. This was the dawn of what we today
recognize as normal jobs, where people make a regular salary
and get paid on an intermittent basis. Prior to this point,
it had been more normal for folks to make a

(03:38):
daily wage. If you showed up and worked twelve hours
on a farm or a building project, you're a factory.
You walked home with cash in your pocket at the
end of the day. Regular modern style jobs changed the norms,
and this caused problems for workers. Bank accounts didn't really
exist for normal people in the late eighteen hundreds, and
it was common for them to run out of money
between paychecks because they'd have medical emergencies, or things would

(04:00):
ache or whatever. Uh, and short term loans evolved as
a way to keep the emerging blue collar working class
alive in the gaps between pay day. So it starts
like you can see in kind of this normal space
is like people are getting paid differently, so they need,
you know, a little bit of money now and then
to like help them help them bridge the gap between
their pay cycles. Right, can I raise my hand? I'm

(04:21):
raising my hand. Yes, raise your hand. I have a question.
That means I have a question. Uh, where does the
money come from? Well, it comes from payday lenders. Um,
So you would have like normal people wouldn't have credit
and like wouldn't be able to get like a loan
from a bank. Like a bank is not going to
give you a loan if you need three hundred bucks
to make up a hole in your in your in
your like budget or whatever. So instead these companies come

(04:45):
in and basically front you, you know, three hundred bucks.
But so they're like private companies, their private private lenders,
private lenders essentially like a rich person. Yeah, that's that's
literally how it was. In some cases. It's just like
someone with enough money to like throw out loans. And
because they're small loans, like a normal loan, like you know,

(05:05):
six percent would be a lot of interest to pay um,
But because these are small loans and they're very short term,
they had like way higher rates of interest. So a
onely week loan would regularly be somewhere between a hundred
and twenty and five a p r um. Yeah, so
that now we're talking the eight hundred still and that

(05:26):
seems insane, but those rates are actually really low compared
to the modern equivalents and paiday loans, so like today's
payday loans will regularly top five and interest um. Yeah,
so that that seems like it might be a little
bit abusive, right, yes, yes it would. Now. Uh, this
is where we get the term loan shark. That's how

(05:47):
these people came to be known, primarily because they got
essentially famous. If you would like, watch a lot of
old TV shows from the forties and fifties that would
show loan characters like you know you you've heard the
story about, like the mob guy threatening to break someone's
leg or whatever if they don't pay a debt. Right
of course, yeah, of that happened from time to time,
But the reality is that they more often relied on
wage garnishment, public embarrassment, or what was called bawling out,

(06:11):
which is less fun than it sounds. It's basically screaming
at someone to shame them into pay. What the fuck? Yeah,
that's that's like just public humiliation. Yeah, that's exactly how
most of the paid a loan industry worked in the
late eighteen hundreds was if you didn't pay, they would
try to humiliate you. That's like psychological torture. It's like

(06:32):
psychological manipulation. It is psychological manipulation. But does it does
it change your opinion on this at all? Sharine to
learn that this actually created a great job opportunity for
women in the workplace slightly. You know, keep keep talking.
I'm gonna quote from a scholarly Commons article. Quote to
compel payments salary lenders pestered debtors incessantly at home, or

(06:55):
sent ballers out to make a scene at work, or
processed wage assignments, or use the hours of attorney they
had taken to confess judgment for before justices of the peace.
They did not have to lay a hand on customers
in arrears to do a profitable business. Indeed, many firms
had a preference for hiring women as loan agents because,
as one news story explained, they give an appearance of
harmlessness to the lending establishment, and an outraged borrower is

(07:17):
not so anxious to kick the manager out of a
window if she is a woman. So so it wasn't
necessarily for the benefit of women, but yeah, it was
just because you wouldn't beat up a loan shark who
was a lady sick. Um. Well, as much as I
really appreciate job opportunes for women, uh, I mean that's

(07:38):
problematic as ship. Yeah, I would say problematic as ship
is fair. Um. So, starting after the Civil War, what
we're called chattel mortgage lenders became increasingly common. So these
were paid a loans backed up by the debtors furniture
and family possessions as collateral. The explicit goal of the
arrangements offered was to trap debtors in an endless cycle

(08:00):
where they would never quite pay off their loan and
thus would spend the rest of their lives racing to
pay off the interest in order to avoid literally losing
their beds. So people would like mortgage their furniture in
order to make ends meet. For sad. That's like, I mean,
I feel like it just boils down to a rich
person taking advantage of a poor person that's desperate. That's
all it boils down to. Yeah, and that's so sad. Yeah,

(08:23):
that is the rich person that must have I mean,
the rich person must have better things to do. But
they're just greedy. They want money and it's money. Yeah,
but they already have it, they want more. So the
term loan shark came up essentially because the very form
of the deal trapped the barrower and an endless cycle.

(08:45):
So you were essentially like always being like chased down
by the shark. You couldn't escape it. Um. The practice
was almost immediately recognized as problematic by various state governments
as well as the federal government, and they tried a
number of ways to get a handle on the problem.
States started by placing what we're called or recaps, and
by the nineteen teens most states limited annual interest in
between eighteen and forty two. So this seems a lot

(09:07):
fairer than a hundred and right, um, and it would
stop people from getting trapped in sustainable cycles of debt,
but it also kind of wiped out the entire short
term loan industry. Um. See. The only way that these
loans could work was by giving relatively small amounts of
money to people with no credit. By definition, their consumer
base had a high default rate. A lot of people

(09:28):
would just completely fail to pay their debts, so the
only way the industry could be profitable was to charge
these high rates of interest. When the government capped that,
loan sharks didn't go away, but they did change. The
endless debt cycles and ballings out were replaced by mafia
men who would offer illegal loans and ensured repayment by
beating the ever living ship out of clients who failed
to pay. So that's kind of problem, the solving the

(09:51):
problem forever, um now, So so you're so you're saying
this is all stemming from the fact that people don't
get paid by the day as much as to you
every other week or every month or whatever. Yes, And
that's like one of the things you have to remember
at the core of this issue is that no matter
how fucked up the payday loan industry is and seems,
people still need them, um because like they you know,

(10:14):
they have no money for nine or ten days and
their kid has to go to a doctor or like
they have. Isn't that something that we should tackle? It
seems like yeah, yeah, certainly, it certainly seems like it, um,
But we're not, um, why would we tackle systemic problems
in our economic system as opposed to covering up a

(10:34):
band aid, or like, like your your knee gets gased
open and you're just like worrying about the blood trickling
on your ankle and not actually the wound. It's that's
a gory sorry, Mr Fiddles, it is a gory situation. Now.
I started by saying that, like the mob guys would
beat the ship out of people for not paying loans,

(10:55):
and that did happen. But one of the weird things
about this story is that the majority of evidence suggest
us that mafia lenders weren't actually all that bad by
the standards of paid a loans um like the more
legitimate lenders. They made their money by locking people into
an endless cycle of debt, but they like didn't actually
beat people up all that often. Uh, and their interest

(11:17):
payments were kind of low compared to like when legitimate
companies would offer paid a loans. So I found a
great quote on exactly how sort of like physical violence
in the loan industry really did work. You know, the
stereotype is the mob guy breaking your legs from not
paying a debt. That wasn't super common to happen. According
to scholarly comments, quote. The debt or is motivated to

(11:39):
pay not only because his body has pledged as collateral,
but also because he wants to preserve his only line
of credit. The creditor, in turn, wants to avoid the
expense of hiring a nutcracker to collect the debt. As
a nineteen sixties Chicago juice man that's what they called
people who beat people up for loans explained the cost
of hiring a thug to break a deadbeat's leg might
exceed the sum he owned owed, and with a broken leg,

(12:01):
it would be hard for the debtor to own money
and catch up on his payments. Imposing a less stabilitating
penalty usually made more sense. A finger deliberately slit open
with the razor blade never kept anybody from working and
serves as a constant reminder of the next payday. But
the best strategy this loan shark consisted was to select
customers carefully and not load them with excessive debt. When
business is good in a smoothly run operation, muscle is

(12:23):
seldom needed for collections. One of the few empirical studies
of a mob loan shark operation confirms this view, based
on FBI case files. The study reported that interviews with
a hundred and fifteen customers of the loan business turned
up only one debtor who had been threatened. None were beaten.
So I mean, I feel like I've watched enough Sopranos
to know that's not true, But um, I'm just kidding now.

(12:43):
I think it's also very interesting that it went from
psychological manipulation and torture to the complete opposite, just like
pure physical Yeah, isn't that fascinating? That's fascinating, Like it's
weird how that happens. How Like when the businesses are
completely legal and the lead system allows them, they psychologically
torture you in charge utterly ruinous rates of debt or

(13:06):
of interest, and then when the business is illegal, the
interest rates go down, but they have to slice open
your finger to get you to pay sometimes, and like
that's that, like you you have to pick one of
the two, like, because people are going to get these
loans either way. I mean it's a little bit still
psychological because you said something like, um, cutting a finger,
like it will be a concert reminder of your debt

(13:27):
because it's like on your hand. So yeah, that's so
fucking manipulative it is. I mean I gotta say, I
kind of I'm more on the mob's side than the
legitimate lenders. Same here, no, same here, I think I
think ultimately, even though the mobsters are probably better off,

(13:50):
like financially, I feel like for the majority of the time,
mobsters kind of came from lower class or like middle
class or like you know what I mean, people are understanding. Yeah,
they they're the they have a better understanding of maybe
the desperation they feel or like the trials and gup
relations of not having a lot of money. And also,
I mean, Tony Soprano is a complicated character. You know, um,

(14:14):
this is going to turn into this as apparents episode,
Tony Soprano put in a forty hour work week every week.
You know. Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't slacking off like
certain unnamed presidents. I mean like he was working around.
Sure he was sucking around and like whatever. But at
the same time, he's a busy man. And I think
I think that's a difference. I think that's a difference because, uh,

(14:35):
legal operation is usually run by rich people that usually
don't lift a finger for their money. Maybe they don't anymore,
maybe they have in the past, where their daddy did
or whatever. But tony soprano working guy. Yeah, that's why
I have a lot more respect for like a drug
dealer than one of these guys who worked at like
a mutual fund or whatever scanning people out during the

(14:57):
financial crash, someone who was like, we're going to as
fargo selling people bad loans. Like, at least the drug dealer,
Like there, you know, for one thing, it's an honest transaction.
You want some heroin, you get some heroin. And for
another thing, like they're out there pounding the ground, they're working, working,
working the floor, so to speak. They're putting on some risk.
I I gotta respect that more than you respect the

(15:21):
financial criminal. So I feel the same way about the
mafia mafia in this case, Like, yeah, maybe you're cutting
open some people's fingers, but at least that's honest finger
cutting work. Yeah, that's honest finger cutting work. Honest finger
cutting work. Now, by the nineteen sixties, it was not
uncommon for mafia lenders to offer annual aprs of under
two for their short term loans. FBI studies also reported

(15:44):
surprisingly low rates given the industry, often around a hundred
and fifty a p R in many cases, mob loans
were less than half as expensive as modern payday loans. UH. Now,
as I stated, violence was not the norm, but cases
did occur that we're shocking enough to spark public outrage.
In one incident in nineteen thirty five, a young clerk
was beaten within an inch of his life for welching
on a debt. This launched a series of investigations by

(16:06):
Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York. Twenty seven people
were arrested for violent collection of debts. Throughout the nineteen
forties and fifties, U S. States cracked down on mafia
loan sharks, and unfortunately, they did so by doing the
opposite of what they'd done to kill the non violent
loan sharks, raising ursurycaps and allowing legal lenders to charge
exorbitant interest rates once again. So by the nineteen seventies,

(16:28):
deregulation of the paid a loan industry had largely starved
the mob out of the business and allowed a thriving
new industry of perfectly legitimate companies charging five and six
interest for short term loans. UH. Individual states realized pretty
quickly that this was even worse than letting the mob
give people loans instead. They started to change their laws
back and reintroduced caps to interest rates. But the big

(16:49):
banks had gotten a taste of how much money paid
A loans could provide. They brought out their lawyers. In
the nineteen seventy eight, the Supreme Court ruled on a
case in Minnesota. That state had had imposed strict laws
on the interest that could be charged on loans, but
banks from other states with hired limits had started coming
in and operating paid a loan businesses, charging the interest
rates of their state of origin. When the case hit

(17:09):
the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court ruled that this behavior
was totally fine, and from now on banks would partner
with short term lending companies to charge outrageously high interest
rates for short term loans, regardless of what the original
individ or what the individual states themselves had on the books.
As a result of this, certain states like Kansas and
Nevada became the hubs for increasingly enormous paid a lending businesses.

(17:30):
So that's cool. What a twist, Yeah, what a twist? Twist. So,
by the early nineteen nineties, the paiday loan industry was
growing at an exponential rate. It had gone from the
purview of shady but ultimately human mobsters to a multibillion
dollar business run by gigantic, faceless corporations that hid behind
the multitude of names and constantly moved across state lines
to make their questionably legal behavior harder to prosecute. Again,

(17:54):
it's kind of a mark of where this story is
going that we're going to look back on the old
days of the mafia cutting up people's fingers, is yeah,
the good old days of payday lending. Yeah. I mean
it's crazy that throughout like basically over a century of
this one's ever been like, let's just let's just get
to the root of the problem, Like what why do
people keep wanting money or needing money? Rather, it's because

(18:17):
of the the just the time between their paychecks. And
that's infuriating that that hasn't even been addressed. It's just
the payday loan fucking clusterfuck keeps getting more clusterfucking yeah,
and nobody, nobody ever even talks about like, well, maybe
we should reform how workers get paid because maybe people

(18:39):
deserve to get their money the day that they earn it,
because why wouldn't they, Like it's like the only reason
it seems weird to suggest that change to us is
because it's not how it works. Um. But like if
you try to think back on it, like, well, why
does the company get the value of your labor immediately
but you have to wait weeks or months to get

(19:00):
the money that you know, when you put it that way,
it's sucking bullshit. It's total bullshit. Like what if I
what if I work an an immense amount of work
and then I die the next day, I have no
like you know what I mean, Like they have benefited,
but I have not exactly you should be able to
and I'm owed on my deathbed. Yeah, that's bullshit. They

(19:20):
got to bury a bunch of money in your casket,
which isn't going to help you any and it'll probably
I mean, like, I mean, okay, I'm freelanced. I've never
actually had like a salary full time job. But the
I like, I work on a day rate when I
work in production or like whatever. As a filmmaker, you
get like a standard rate sometimes, but even that, it's

(19:43):
it's like weeks after the job is over that you
finally get paid. And I'm wondering, like maybe there are
some things that are like, well the budget, Like I don't,
I don't know, man, what's the I don't think there's
no there's no solving this, there's no Oh my god. Yeah,
there there are some companies there. There's one company based

(20:06):
out of the Bay Area that's trying to like reform
the system. And the way they're trying to do it
is by essentially, if you work for a company like
uber or lift um, you sign up a thing with
them and basically they pay you what you earn when
you earn it, and they take like one percent, like
a flat rate. Uh, and you get your money instantly,
and then when the company pays you, the money goes

(20:27):
to the company that has been giving you your money.
So like essentially um. Yeah, So like there are attempts
like it also, is it because of taxes? I don't know,
because I can't. It can't be in most cases because,
like you, I've spent most of my working career as
a freelancer, usually getting paid four to six weeks after

(20:47):
I do the work, uh, and they don't take any
taxes out. That's like how freelancing works. So I think
it's just a system that was set up because it
really benefits the companies that employ us um and that
has been going on for so long that most people
don't ever think about how messed up it is that
they've got to wait a month to get their money. Yeah, yeah,
you're right. But then at the same time, I'd like,

(21:10):
I mean, maybe I've worked on too many indie indie
film shoots, but like when I hire someone as a
sound person or whatever, I try to pay them, like,
if not after the workday, like within the next morning
or the day after that. So it's like, I feel
like when you're not married to the system, when you're
not thinking this is the only way it has to be,
then you're more open minded. Like I've never had a

(21:32):
salary job where I had to wait a couple of weeks.
In my mind, I was like, well, they worked for
me all for twelve hours. Today I will pay them,
you know what I mean. So I think maybe we're
just maybe the majority of people are just they think
this is the way it has to be. Yeah, and
that's true. We've got to break Freeman. It's not I
mean to go back to the noble drug dealer. You know.
When I was when I was a very poor young man,

(21:55):
the only friends of mine, who ever had cash on
hand were the ones who made their living selling drugs,
because you get paid as soon as you provide a
service if you're if you're a drug dealer, yet another
reason all of business should take a hand out of
the leaf out of the book of dealing drugs. What
if everything worked like drugs? Okay? But then The Wire

(22:17):
to bring back television? I mean not, it doesn't end
well for a lot of people. I only watched the
first episode of The Wire, but it seemed like it
was going pretty well, you're wrong, Well, you're wrong. You
need to watch the Does it does it go to
a dark place that's unfortunate? Well, first of all, it's
an amazing show, but also, like I understand, mean, I
keep bringing up TV as because I think it's funny

(22:39):
to like think of my only source of information about
drugs or or the mafia are from television. But at
the same time not false. Um, but I do think
it is a very insightful way to understand. I don't know, like,
how else do we learn just from film and television?
And that's how the the word gets out? Yeah, that's uh.

(23:00):
I think this episode is just trying to tell you
all that just give drug dealing a shot. I mean
that that too. I was going to say, burn the
system down, but you know what, our listeners shouldn't burn down, Sharine.
Ad breaks the wonderful companies that support our our our
show with products and services, don't. What if a payday

(23:22):
loan ad came on right after this, then I'm sure
it's a completely ethical payday loan company, just like completely
ethical company Coke Industries, who advertised on our show, Oh no,
we love here. Sharine. You were just telling me the
other day, Robert, I really have a lot of crude
oil that I need refined. Do you know anyone who

(23:43):
can refine my crude oil and put out more than
twice as much carbon into the atmosphere as other crude
oil refineries? And I said, I said, I know exactly.
And and Coke Industries that that's your that's your go to.
You're not wrong, You're not wrong. You know what else
isn't wrong? Products? We're back, we're talking about payday loans.

(24:11):
When we when we last uh finished at least reading
into the script. We've gotten to the point where the
Supreme Court in nineteen seventy eight ruled that banks could
essentially charge whatever interest rates were legal in their states
of origin, but extend the loans to people in other
states that put on, you know, different caps on interest rates. Um.
And this is sort of responsible for the meteoric rise

(24:33):
of the modern payday loan industry. So by the late
nineteen nineties, rates of between two hundred and five pent
had become the norm. Lenders began tacking on additional service
fees to get around limits on the amount of interest
they could charge. By the early two thousand's, eleven million
Americans spent an average of five hundred dollars a year
on fees alone. The situation was already out of control,

(24:56):
but not so out of control that an extremely gifted
grifter couldn't make it out of control. Here and this
brings us to a little guy named Scott Tucker. You
ever heard of Scott Tucker? Shearine, it sounds like a motherfucker.
Scott Tucker is a motherfucker. Uh. He was originally going
to be the subject of this entire episode. Um, he's
not the father of payday loans, but I think it

(25:17):
might be accurate to call him like the stepfather who
moves in when you're already sixteen and shares his Miller
Tall Boys with you. He's the that guy of of
feel like, look at you funny when you work shorts
in the house and like yes, yeah, yeah, And he
never he never quite crosses the line. But in a way,
just making the comments is crossing the line. But like
you can't do anything actionable because your mom's really into him.

(25:39):
He's that. He's that guy of the payday loan industry.
Like you maybe like got some food on your next
to your lip, and he like just us his thumb
to take it off without saying anything to you. And yeah,
you have goose bumps everywhere and you have to keep
it to yourself for the rest of your life. And
then maybe they have a kid, and then that kid
has no idea that his dad is a fucking creep.
Yeah he that that you you really have a field

(26:00):
for Scott Walker. Uh he said, he said Scott Walker,
but Scott Tucker. Sorry, that's another piece of ship named Scott.
Not a great name. Not a great name. Scott Freeze
the Way to Beat. That's an advertising for tape. Scott
was born on May fifth, nineteen sixty two, in Kansas City, Missouri.
He attended Rockhurst High School in Kansas State University, where

(26:21):
he studied business administration. Two years into that degree, he
decided he'd learned enough about business, so he dropped out
of school and went into business for himself. In nineteen eight,
he borrowed fifty thousand dollars from the American Bank of
Kansas City, offering what he said was his new Porsche
as collateral. Now, the reality is that Scott did not
own a Porsche. He had briefly, but he'd sold it

(26:41):
in order to fund his scams and just lied to
the bank that he still had it. Tucker's business plan
was to use the money he acquired from this real
loan to fund a fake loan business. According to the
Center for Public Integrity quote, while a partner in Oregon
ran newspaper and magazine ads throughout the country offering commercial loans,
Tucker posed as the president of a seemingly high powered
investment bank in Overland Park called Chase, Morgan, Stearns and Lloyd.

(27:04):
The operation was a fraud, collecting more than a hundred
thousand dollars in advanced fees from at least fifteen borrowers
without providing any loans. So his first loan business doesn't
actually give people loans. He's he's just stealing money, um
and and kind of stealing the name of JP Morgan
and Chase, as well as bear Stearns and Lloyd's of London.
But I don't feel so bad about that because all

(27:26):
of those companies are terrible. Um, but that is what
he's doing now. Tucker wasn't only do you only have
me on to talk about like shitty white men grifters. Yes,
that's why I'm here. Yes, you're my You're you're you're
my shitty white men grifters. Get I mean, immediately after
this episode, we're gonna take talk about Jacob wool again.
So I cannot wait to bring up that motherfucker again.

(27:47):
So Tucker wasn't only a major crimes kind of guy.
In nineteen eighty nine, while he was in the middle
of his stealing money from people and pretending to run
a loan company business, he got in trouble for writing
bad checks to a moving company he hired to move
loads of used furniture for another one of his businesses.
This kind of sloppiness ensured that Tucker was quickly caught
committing tens of thousands of dollars in fraud. He was
convicted in nineteen ninety one and spent a year in prison. Now,

(28:11):
the next five years of Tucker's life are a little
bit of a mystery. He either kept his nose clean
and obeyed the law for half a decade, or he
got up to a series of smaller scale grifts and
he wasn't caught for them. Whatever the truth, by nineteen
ninety seven he was ready to get back into the
major crimes game. That year he met Charles Hallinan generally
referred to as the godfather of payday loans, although that

(28:32):
isn't quite true, as we've gotten over already. But Helenan
was wildly successful at running a series of shady quasi
legal companies operating under the lending laws of one state
while offering loans in completely different states. Because Khan men
instinctively recognized their own, Halenan instantly liked Tucker. The two
became fast friends, and Helenan saw the young man as
a protege. He agreed to loan Scott Tucker five thousand

(28:53):
dollars to create a payday lending company. Tucker would be
president and run the business from Overland Park, Kansas. As
part of a deal, Tucker signed a contract promising not
to create any competing paid A loan companies. I'm sure
that that's gonna go. Well mm hmm, yeah, two con
men just shaking hands there, so what a pure friends
with a pure friendship. I am sure neither of them

(29:16):
will take advantage of the other. Let's read the next paragraph.
Helen and and Tucker inked their deal in September of nine.
Tucker instantly started a new company see okay management and
direct violation of the contract he just signed with his mentor.
He began shuffling assets over from the company he created
with Helenan to his new business. Next, Tucker built up

(29:36):
a network of dummy corporations based out of Carson City, Nevada,
which he could use to receive money from the network
of paid A lending businesses he established at the same time.
Within a couple of weeks, Tucker was running through a
convoluted series of businesses lending companies with names like Cash Advance,
Preferred Cash Loans, and United Cash Loads. For years, Tucker
kept Helenan in the dark about the fact that he

(29:56):
basically used the other man's money to build up a
paid a loan Empire, the he was the soul beneficiary of.
He called his friend every Saturday and gave him updates
on their company, which was actually the fakest of his
fake companies. He assured the other man that c Okay
Management was just a part of their new lending service.
The reality, however, is that Tucker had done something new
and completely unprecedented in the world of scammy payday loans.

(30:18):
The standard for Helenan and other paid A lenders was
to base your company in states like Nevada and Kansas
that allowed cripplingly high rates of interest to be charged. Then,
thanks to the Supreme Court, they could offer loans to
people in states like California was stronger laws in place,
but even the states with the loosest ursory laws still
had some laws about that kind of thing, and some
laws was too many laws for Scott Tucker. He realized

(30:39):
that Native American reservations offered a unique opportunity. They got
to pass loan. Yeah, he's suffered enough by the hands
of a white man. No, no, they have not. Now
they're getting sucked into one of his grifts. For literal

(31:00):
he's on the dollar. Yeah, yeah, So Native American reservations
could pass their own laws about like ursory levels and stuff.
And Scott Tucker found that if he basically convinced reservations
without laws about these things to let him operate companies
out of their land and offered them a token bribe,
well then he could really really get into fucking over

(31:20):
some poor people. So, yeah, he's an innovator. You love innovators.
That's what built this country. I love innovators. I mean,
I mean this country was literally built by innovative people
finding innovative ways to take advantage of Native Americans. So
like he's really, he's he's just following the steps of
his ancestors. Really, yeah, yeah, Scott Tucker, the junior, junior, junior,

(31:46):
the fourth and fifth or whatever. He's just following in
the footsteps of his shitty, fucking scum relatives. It's a
noble tradition, a noble, noble, noble mr who I mean,
look all Tucker is doing, like sharene p R is

(32:07):
clearly not enough to be charging people for short term loans.
So he had to find some way to get that
number above se and using Native American Reservations was the
only way to do it. Like that seems perfectly ethical
to me. Um, I'll be right back. I'm just gonna
go dump of this when they're really it's fine, I'm
just gonna dump out of the balcony. Yeah, and I'm

(32:27):
just gonna set up a little business on a Native
American reservation. But also, but also it's like, how much
money is enough for these fox? You know what I mean?
Like you're already rich, You're already benefiting and and profiting
off of people that are so much less fortunate than
you and less privilege than you. Look, how much is enough?

(32:49):
Why can't these greedy fox just just well be fucking satisfied.
We'll get to why he couldn't be satisfied with the
amount of money at a little bit charing. Because Scott
Tucker's got got some big plans from the money he's
grifting out of people. I don't wanna, don't want to
make it think like he doesn't have he doesn't have
some ambitions here, so investing in becoming a DJ or

(33:13):
something or like getting kind of he's does the very
rich person equivalent of becoming a dj. Um. But we'll
get to that in just a second. So, according to
the Kansas City star. Tucker's businesses quote operated under brand
names including a marilone Cash Advance, one Click Cash, United
Cash Loans, and five hundred Fast Fast Cash. In addition

(33:33):
to steep interest rates, authorities said consumers were tricked by
the terms of the loan through renewals and fees. Five
hundred dollar loan could result in the borrow we're owing
nineteen hundred and twenty five dollars. So that's the kind
of like level of grift we're we're talking about, Like
your kid gets a medical bill and you need five
hundred bucks to cover the debt, and then you know,

(33:54):
in a month or two, you wind up owing two
grand to Scott Tucker because you don't know how to
read a contract act as well as Scott Tucker's lawyers
know how to write one. Um, and because he's operating
out of Native American land, it doesn't matter what the
laws are in your state. UM. Yeah, so that's fun.
Over the years, Tucker turned to five hundred thousand dollar

(34:14):
investment into a two billion dollar a year business with
more than four and a half million annual customers. This
meant his companies accounted for roughly of the eleven million
Americans who used paid A loans. Now. Tucker did, of
course attract legal attention, but it wasn't immediately clear that
Scott Tucker was actually behind any of his companies. Regulators
wound up fighting his front businesses, never realizing that they

(34:35):
were all essentially disposable shell companies arms of the same octopus. Now.
Kansas was the first state to attempt to do something
about one of Tucker's companies, a paid A lender called
cash Advance back in the early aughts. They went after
it for deceptive practices that led to Kansen's illegally being
charged almost eight interest in short term loans, according to
the Center for Public Integrity. Quote Danny Volpat, the lead

(34:58):
attorney in the case for Kansas Bank Commission n says
he never knew that Tucker, living and working in the
same state, was actually behind the paid A lenders he
battled for more than two years. Will Pat settled with
one of Tucker's shell companies in Nevada, a Shell but
no longer exists. Tucker quickly abandoned the trade name cash
Advance for these reasons. Bill Pat says it's unclear that
Tucker would violate the settlement agreement if he started lending
in Kansas again. So you see, because of the way

(35:19):
all these shell companies are set up and where they're located,
it's kind of impossible for anyone to go after him,
like state level governments. It's the same reason why like
a drug enterprise, you would want to have people located
in different states doing different things, because it disrupts law enforcement,
like it, it just makes it impossible to catch. So
Tucker did keep lending in Kansas, just under new companies

(35:40):
with new names. His businesses were all run from Overland
Park in a massive six person office, but in order
to keep up the illusion that these were Native American
run businesses, Tucker's employees were given daily weather weather reports
from the tribal lands where they were supposed to be based.
This way they could more effectively lie to borrowers. It
took until two thousand five for any state authorities to
even learn that Scott to even learn the name Scott Tucker.

(36:03):
This is because yeah, well it's because he hired an
actor to pretend to be the CEO of his business
and to register all the show. Yeah yeah, now fucking
love like the beginning of like well, actually no, JT.
Lee Roy was nothing like that. But but what is
it with I'm just mad? Yeah, well, I mean I

(36:24):
always get so mad on your fucking show, Robert, I
mean always mad. But Sharine, does it change your mind
to know that it's not illegal to do that in
the state of Nevada. I don't care about what illegal
or not in this fucking country. Obviously we're fucked. Yeah. Yeah,
and his Tony Soprano. Yeah, it's always not real. Yeah,

(36:45):
it's it's amazing that Tony Soprano was breaking the law.
But Scott Tucker wasn't. I mean he was, actually, but
at this point he wasn't. Um So when this con
came to light in the color Colorado Attorney General subpoena
and him, Tucker was not charged with any crime because
it wasn't illegal to have a fake person pretend to
be this CEO of the company. It was just some
guy he hired. Yeah, it was just some schmuck. He

(37:06):
just needed a name. Would and what would he do?
Whould just like appear at places that Tucker were supposed
to be at. No, No, it wasn't even that detailed.
He would just register, like sign his name when they
were registering the new companies and like, yeah, like it
was that simple, Like he just wanted a name that
wasn't Scott Tucker on all this stuff, so it was
that much harder to come after him. Yeah. So uh.

(37:29):
Years later, one of Tucker's former employees laid out under
oath exactly how many of these shell businesses Tucker operated quote.
In addition to owning one Click Cash, c Okay also
owned or was affiliated with a marylan Us, Fast Fast Cash,
United Cash Loans, Preferred Cash Loans, and Internet Cash Advanced Marketing.
I understand that there were at least five hundred Internet

(37:49):
based paid A lending companies that are currently affiliated with
one of the five companies mentioned above owned by clk um. So.
This employee was witnessed to some of the unspeakable human
cost ofers empire of debt. He later reported under oath,
I often saw a customer loan of three hundred dollars
turned into a nine hundred dollar debt in a very
short period of time due to interest rollover in late fees.

(38:10):
He estimated that six of the money he brought in
during a given month came from the interest rollover in
late fees rather than the customer paying down the principal balance.
So again, the business isn't people paying down their balance.
The business is conning them into paying extra money through
late fees and service charges and whatnot. And for a
very long time, Tucker's paid a lending business did spectacularly

(38:32):
well for him. He netted somewhere around four hundred million
dollars and that's just the money we can verify. He
bought a one point three million dollar ferrari, an eight
million dollar house in Aspen, and a one point eight
million dollar house in Kansas. Most of his ill gotten riches, however,
were spent on his true passion. You want, I guess
you want to guess what it is sharing? You want
to guess what what what this guy's equivalent of becoming
a DJ is. Um let me think maybe it's gin

(39:00):
or like sometimes or No. No, he wanted to be
a arcade master. No, I mean that is kind of
close because a lot of arcades have racing games, and
Scott Tucker wanted to be a race car driver. What
that's the most That's the widest dream I've ever heard of. Yeah,

(39:25):
if you look him up on Wikipedia, his name is
even given as stop Scott Tucker parentheses racing driver um,
and he wasn't you say it's the whitest thing ever.
It's it's it's really not um because he doesn't get
involved in the honest, god fearing beer soaked kind of
races that like NASCAR fans watch. He did prestige, fancy

(39:46):
races and like Europe and ship like the Ferrari Challenge
and the Rolex sports Car Series and the American Laman Series.
Like he didn't even do like the honest, drunken NASCAR
rally kind of races like he was. He was really
in the stupid, fancy, rich guy multimillion dollar cars. Have
a question, Yes, is this guy married or or with anybody?

(40:10):
Or is he fun? Yeah? No, he was married to
some broad What is humanity? What is now? So if
we just showed me a picture of him, he's gross. Yeah,
he's a gross looking guy. He's a fucking dru by
ass motherfucker. His face is like melting on either side. Yeah,
he looks like like a young Jeff Gordon, if Jeff

(40:31):
Gordon had wandered too close to a candle. Now, he
does seem to have been a pretty decent race car driver,
like at least he won some races, and he was
Rookie of the Year at one point. I don't think
he was like super good, but I don't have any
real ability to rate race car drivers. Um. He seems

(40:52):
from what I've read, like he was sort of on
the edge of where he might have been good enough
to drive professionally if he hadn't had hundreds of millions
of dollars um. But he probably wouldn't have ever established
a racing career if he hadn't had hundreds of millions
of dollars. Now, the term used within the racing community
for dudes like Scott is a gentleman driver, and that's
essentially racing lingo for a rich guy who buys a

(41:12):
really fancy car and is able to become a professional
race car driver because they're rich for some other reason. Okay,
so gentleman driver. Scott Tucker was well known within the
racing community, and he verged on being famous outside of Kansas. Curiously,
he did no racing inside the state of Kansas and
seems to have gone out of his way to avoid
attracting any attention there. Articles I've read that interviewed people

(41:34):
on the racing scene are mixed about Tucker. Some of
his fellow racers said that he was very good, but
Gunner Jannette, who finished runner up to Tucker in a
twos and ten race, was less positive. Here's this American
Life quote. Jeanette said he didn't like the manner that
Chucker Tucker chose to win the championship. He cheated really
well inside of the rules, which maybe says a lot

(41:54):
about his character, says Jeannette. Uh. He adds that Tucker
was a detail oriented racer who found loophole's for the
first time in series history. He got them to allow
him to get points in whichever car finished better. It
was very difficult racing against him, where he would drive
two cars and basically if one car had an issue
in the other car finished better, he would get points
for that, says Jeanette, whose team only fielded one car. Wow,

(42:14):
So he was a continent in everything you did. That's
the only thing he knows how to do is be
a con man. How you doing? How you doing? Their sharing?
Um My blood is boiling. Let's bring it back to
the boils. I am. I am going to guess that
Scott Tucker spent at least as much money on his
side racing career as it would have taken to replace

(42:37):
the water systems in Flint, Michigan. When you put it
that way, When you put it that way, it is
disgusting what fucking these grifters do. Like, it's not how
selfish and disgusting of a of a person do you
have to be deep down to be that fucking greedy

(43:01):
and selfish? And I'm just pissed. I mean, but the
alternative sharene is that he wouldn't be able to own
multiple million dollar Ferraris. And can you imagine anyone being
happy without that? I mean that is true. I guess
anyone for every day of the week. So yeah, exactly,
seen driving the same one on Monday and Tuesday. Yeah,

(43:22):
like a poor person driving a Ferrari on two consecutive days. Now,
yeah exactly, like some some kind of fu yeah dirt farmer.
Now starting a two thousand eight, Tucker began dealing with
increasing legal threats to his empire. One of them came
from his old mentor, Hallinan. Halenan claims that around two
thousand six, Scott's weekly call stopped and we're replaced by

(43:45):
occasional emails. Halenan sent an accountant over to look into
their company and found that it had quote essentially been
ransacked and substantially of all of its assets catch and
profits diverted. So we realized that this business he'd put
half a million dollars into funding had basically been hollowed
out by the guy he thought was his partner, and
all of the money put into establishing an empire of

(44:06):
scammy uh payday loan businesses. So helen and sued his
former business partner, which had the unhappy side effect of
drawing legal attention towards both men, who up until that
point had mostly been insulated due to the structure of
their companies. In October of two thousand eight, and Olaf County,
Kansas deputy sheriff ticketed Scott Tucker for going eighty six

(44:26):
miles per hour and a sixty mile per hour zone.
Here's how a joint investigation between CBS and I Watch
News described what happened next. Quote Two days later, Tucker's wife, brother,
sister in law, and sister in law, as well as
several businesses with ties to the payday loan mogul, suddenly
donated a total of four thousand dollars to the campaign
of a candidate for local district attorney, the office that
prosecutes traffic tickets. Among the businesses that donated a thousand

(44:50):
dollars to the campaign were to payday loan companies that
the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma claims to own. Weeks later,
the ticket was reduced to a proper parking to the
surprise of the deputy who ticketed Tucker. The charge kept
Tucker's driving record clean. Wow. Cool cool stuff. Now cool stuff.
The good news is that this lawsuit with Hallohan, his

(45:12):
old partner, which was settled out of court, in this
bribery of a district attorney candidate to get his charges reduced,
these would wind up being the seeds of Scott Tucker's undoing.
But before we get to that, you know, we gotta
get to right now. Um, I was gonna jump out
of the window after that break or before after Okay,

(45:35):
I'll do that after okay, Well we are about products.
We're back. So I actually am really thrilled because I
like that the undoing of this motherfucker was, in fact,
it was just their greediness getting the better of them,

(45:56):
you know what I mean. It's kind of how like
Ted Bundy got caught because he was driving all times.
You know, Ted Bundy only got caught by police when
he was driving stupidly because he doesn't know how to
drive obviously. Yea. But I mean they're not they're not
the same type of evil at all. But I'm saying,
I like when they're undoing is done by them. Yeah,

(46:21):
I like that too, because it's it's it's this kind
of thing where like it's not even a serious charge,
like going twenty six miles over the speed limit. If
that's your only traffic crime, it's not going to get
your license taken away or anything like that. Um, you'll
pay a heavy fee like like fine. But like Scott
Tucker could afford that ship. Um, he just he just
it bugged him to not have a perfect driving record

(46:43):
because he fancied himself this great race car driver. So
he Yeah, he essentially exposed everything for that, And it's
that's funny. That's really funny. In two thousand eleven, I
Watched News published an investigation that marked the first time
Tucker's fraudule loan Empire was laid out in the open. Now,
by that point, the I R S and law enforcement

(47:04):
were already interested in Tucker's business because of the lawsuit
with hallinan Um and he'd started to claim in public
that he no longer had anything to do with any
of his paid a loan businesses. I watch his investigation
looked into the structure of his bribes to the Kansas
District Attorney and essentially used that to like lay out
the structure of his organization. So I'm gonna quote from

(47:24):
their investigation. Among the companies that gave five dollar campaign
donations to the prosecutor on the same day as several
of Tucker's relatives were two tribal businesses, AMG Services and
M and E Services. AMG Services operates out of an
office complex and Overlent Park, the same office that Tucker
lists his own and securities and Exchange commission filings. A
MG Services pays the property tax on Tucker's eight million

(47:46):
dollar vacation rental and Aspen, Colorado. According to the county records,
one of AMG services biggest vendors said in a lawsuit
that Scott Tucker in two thousand nine was the owner
and chief officer of A MG Services. Most revealing of
all bank records showed that Tuck and his brother Blaine
were the only two people able to sign for four
paid A lending businesses of one tribe. The tribes may
only receive a sliver of the revenue from the paid

(48:07):
A lending business, So all this sort of laid out
the exact structure of his company, including the fact that
he was basically bilking these Native American tribes for their
land and giving them pennies on the dollar. Another class
action lawsuit from borrowers in California revealed that the exact
amount that these tribes received was between one and two
percent of revenue from the loans, which again raked in

(48:30):
eight or more in interest. Over the years, twenty two
different states took Tucker to court, with varying degrees of success,
but a combination of years of lawsuits and dogged reporting
gradually revealed the true face of Tucker's business. In two
thousand fourteen, facing increasing legal challenges, Scott's brother Blaine, committed
suicide by leaping off the top of a parking garage.
I should not make any jokes about jumping out of windows.

(48:53):
I've learned well. I mean, a window is not a
parking garage unless that parking garage has Winna why did
he do I mean, obviously at this to be a questioned,
but what was he involved in the business at all? Yeah?
He both of his brothers were involved in the business,
and in fact, one of his brothers got in trouble
because the money that they were making sort of legitimately
through paid a loans wasn't enough, and so he just

(49:13):
started buying people's information and uh calling them and telling
them that they owed him money and having debt collectors
threatened people who hadn't taken out loans um and one
of the debt collectors that he hired to do this
threatened to rape a guy's wife for not paying a
debt that he didn't owe. And so that guy started
suing the pants off of Scott Tucker's brothers, and it
was it was this whole big mess, um, So what

(49:35):
the fuck? Yeah, they, like Scott Tucker, was mostly focused
on the basic crimes of of running. So it's it's
a fucking family of awful of evil. Yeah. Once Scott
Tucker got successful, he brought his brothers in, and his
brothers were even less disappointed than him. He had too
I think two that were involved at least to too

(49:56):
many Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, riddance whatever, way, too too many.
This is the Tucker family is a great case for
why condom should be free. Um yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah.
Uh wait, So after his brother committed suicide, did that
change anything? Well, there were a number of federal lawsuits
and investigations underway at that point. So his brother's suicide

(50:20):
like it ended his brother Blaine's problems, but Scott Tucker
was still in hot water, and in September of two
thousand sixteen, the Federal Trading Commission hit Scott Tucker with
a one point three billion dollar civil judgment, the largest
ever obtained in a litigated case. Tucker's home and his
beloved race cars were all repossessed by the government. It's
a real heartbreaker. Yeah. Yeah, he probably cried about that.

(50:41):
I'm sure he did. Now that makes me happy, Yeah,
it does. I feel happy for the first time today.
If you watch his race car being taken away and
him crying in its garage, yeah, you get to see
him be sad in the in Dirty Money, the first
episode of that Netflix series, because it's like filmed right
around when the from it was taking all of his ship,
and it's it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Nice now, uh?

(51:06):
In two thousand sixteen is like that same year, a
New York grand jury indicted Tucker and a bunch of
his business partners for extending deceptive loans, unlawful debt collection,
and racketeering. The case revealed that Tucker had actually been
charging even more interest than had previously been known. Some
of his customers paid upwards of a thousand percent interest
on their loans. Tho thousand percent. I can't even compute

(51:30):
that in my fucking plead brain. What the funk A
thousand percent? No? And it's it's weird that this sentence
is something I'm going to literally say, But it's definitely
more ethical to just cut people's fingers open. Like I
agree with you. I've never agreed with you more. Yeah, yeah,
wild that that's the case. So Tucker was sentenced to
sixteen years in prison for running a three point five

(51:53):
billion dollar criminal empire. That same year, Tucker's mentor, Helenan,
was convicted of collecting more than four d two million
dollars in the legal debt. He was sentenced to fourteen
years in prison. But Shrine, if you're thinking the bust
of two major payday loan scammers meant the industry itself
was in for hard times. Think again, were you thinking that?

(52:15):
I mean, I know that there are still pay dalan
companies that exist now, so I'm know I know that
their end, or their demise or their fucking decade of
vacation time in prison didn't mean the end of the
payday loan companies. But um, you would think, I mean,
in in a world that is better than the one
we live in, you would think that evil people in

(52:38):
control of payday loan companies would at least learn from
these evil people's mistakes, right, you would think that. But no,
I mean they learned from their mistakes and that they
don't commit as obvious of crimes, but they do continue
to do the same terrible things. So it didn't it
didn't lessen It didn't lessen it at all, And no one,

(53:00):
no one was scared, too scared enough to change their ways.
And in fact, the region of Kansas that Tucker worked in,
specifically like around Kansas City, like the wealthy neighborhoods there,
became sort of a haven for the payday loan industry
because of local laws in that regard and suddenly, like
anybody with enough cash to open up a business, UM

(53:23):
was able to create online payday loan companies that just
funneled huge amounts of money into neighborhoods like Mission Hill
in Kansas, around Kansas City, where like the very wealthiest
people in Kansas lived. I found an article published a
year after the FTC in Diet at Scott Tucker UM.
It quotes several attendees at Catholic churches in wealthy areas,

(53:43):
most notably Saint Anne's and Mission Hills, about sort of
how the payday lending industry flushed the area with cash.
Around two thousand and thirteen and fourteen, UM One Worship
recalled quote. It was most obvious at the school auctions.
You'd see these clicks of people pulling up in limos
acting wild, dropping a lot of money on exotic two
week vacations and the other lavish items up forbidding, or

(54:04):
all of a sudden, so and so has a brand
new Range Rover, or so and so family is moving
into some giant Mission Hills mansion. You see it enough
times and you start to go, where is this money
coming from? And on one hand, it's St Anne. This
is a school in a church that serves Mission Hills
in Prairie Village, you expect to see nice cars in
the parking lot, but there was something so sudden and
so loud about this. It was this bizarre explosion of
really extreme wealth. So David Hudnall is the journalist who

(54:29):
wrote this story, and he pressed Reverend Keith Lunsford of St.
Anne as to whether or not he thought taking money
gotten from fleecing the poor was a very Christian uh
thing to engage in. And Reverend Lunsford responded, I don't
have any firsthand knowledge of anybody at St. An involved
in the paid a loan industry, So he didn't. It isn't.
Isn't the church just one big giant paid a loan industry? Yeah? Sure,

(54:53):
like yeah yeah, and and and a lot of the
Pentecostal ones as well, um like Krefflo doll uh and
some of those folks. So I have I have an
unrelated question. When you have a sec yeah, my hand
is raised, absolutely, ask away. Okay, thank you, Mr Frizzle. Um,
I want to ask A while ago you mentioned that

(55:15):
Tucker worked at a building that had like six hundred employees.
So the employees at these companies. Are they paid well?
Are they basically like labor force that are like they
might as well be factory workers that get paid the
bare minimum and just to survive, or at the very least,
are they paying their workers a decent amount to live?
You know what I mean? Some of them were paid

(55:35):
very well, Like the ones whose job was to actually
collect debts generally got a portion of those debts. And
if they were bringing in tens of thousands of dollars
a month, they lived very well. Um, As you know,
when it came to people that weren't as critical to
the business and weren't involved in as much as the
shady stuff, I think Tucker probably paid them as little
as he could get away with, because that's how most
of these people tend to work. You see. I was

(55:55):
trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. That
was like, maybe he at least gave some people job.
But in the end, um, he is unredeemable, so keep going.
Sorry for interrupting. I would call him an unredeemable asshole.
Speaking of unredeemable assholes. After the payday loan industry exploded
in Mission Hills, St Anne's church managed to meet an

(56:15):
eight million dollar fundraising goal. UM. One parishioner told the
Pitch which is the site I found this article and
that covers local Kansas City news. It presented a moral
conundrum for St. Anne because there was all this money
coming into the church through donations and through the auctions,
and I mean it was huge money. And gradually everybody
realized that it was money that, if you trace it
back to its route, came from poor people who were
being taken advantage of who are being charged crazy interest rates.

(56:38):
So there were a lot of behind closed doors, hushed tones,
conversations happening about it. People on the finance committee, in
the school board, we're talking about the morality of taking
that money. But in the end, I think they just
looked the other way. Now. David huddon All, the journalist
who wrote this story, also went over to a poor
part of town and talked to a reverended a church
whose clientele were the victims of rich people who funded
the renovations at St. Anne. Because David huddon All is

(56:59):
a good journalist, he talked to Reverend Ernie Davis, who
told him, we've seen members of our parish who lost
their homes through the snowball effective paid a lending. It
has absolutely ravaged the lives of people in our parish.
There's no justification for it. In the faith we share,
anything that oppresses the poor is condemned in both Jewish
and Christian scriptures. People have a sense of what is
right and fair, whether it's through scripture or through their hearts,

(57:19):
and charging especially poor people, hundreds of percent and interest
is oppressive. So that's fun. Yeah, but was this guy
still part of the problem. No, No, this guy. This
guy led a church in a poorer part of town
where like all of his parishioners were losing their houses
because the loans. The people at St. Anne's were making
millions of Yeah, because it's all churches, bullshit, Yes, some people, Okay,

(57:43):
just rich churches. Yeah, okay, cool, um, keep going. Sorry,
I bet you're wondering, sharene, how bad is the payday
loan industry? Really? Like? What? What? Like? What? What do
we know statistically about the actual impacts that it has
on poor people? Right? Like that? That that that's kind
of what I have. I have a couple of questions
that I've I've been saving up. But yeah, well have

(58:05):
you dropped the questions and then I'll get I'll get
onto my Well, well, okay, so I was thinking credit cards.
So you have paid a loan industries that supply poor
people or desperate people with immediate money. Then you have
credit cards. It's very easy to open a credit card

(58:27):
as long as you have decent credit. I'm sure a
credit card will give you credit. I mean, a credit
card company is going to give you a credit card
if you're just like passable. Um, so are paid a
loan industries tackling those that have worst credit that can't
have a credit card or that's exactly it. These are
for people who can't get credit because they I mean

(58:49):
oftentimes because they had credit cards and they like we're
really bad with them, um. But other times just because
they've never had any sort of credit history, because they're
very very poor and they've only ever worked. Like a
lot of the people who get paid a loans have
never had a bank account, you know. They're the kind
of people who grew up in the poorest parts of town,
like like like a lot of them are like black

(59:11):
and Hispanic people who grew up in very very poor
circumstances and have only ever worked sort of cash in
hand jobs and who just don't I've just I've just
showed my privilege thinking that everyone can get a credit card.
But obviously I forgot that it's a privilege to even
considering a credit card. Yeah, yeah, exactly, like the the

(59:31):
the paiday loans are mainly for people who really like
credit cards aren't even an option for them, because as
bad as the credit card industry is, it's generally a
lot less abuse of than the payday loan industry. Yeah.
I was thinking about that. Yeah, I agree. Um, and
I guess. I mean, my other one is not really
a question, more of a statement, but I can save it. Okay, Well,

(59:54):
let's let's let's get onto some statistics. So I decided
to look into I wanted to like find all of
the research I could on how bad payday loans were
and like how they actually impact the poor and communities. Um.
I found a two fourteen consumer Financial Financial Protection Bureau
study that they did on like, they evaluated twelve million

(01:00:15):
payday loans in three states. According to the New York Times,
quote study discredits once and for all, the industry's portrayal
of these loans is a convenient option for people who
can easily repay the debt on the next payday, customarily
in two weeks. In fact, only fifteen percent of borrowers
in the study could raise the money to repay the
total debt without borrowing again within fourteen days. Twenty of
these borrowers default on a loan at some point, which

(01:00:36):
can result in credit damage and more bank fees, and
sixty renewed a loans, sometimes more than ten times and
had to pay fees that put them on a slippery
slow towards death that we would be difficult to repay.
So Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
described the story of a woman in Pennsylvania who lost
her job at a hospital and took out a short
term eight hundred dollar loan to pay rent. As at

(01:00:57):
the time she spoke to the CFPB, she had aid
more than four hundred dollars on the loan and was
still in debt. She was also still being hounded by
debt collectors. Ye In two sixteen, Christine dough Bridge of
the Federal Reserve conducted a study that found paiday loans
actually helped families in the wake of natural disasters and
other singular issues. Quote in periods of temporary financial distress

(01:01:18):
after extreme weather events like hurricanes and blizzards. I find
that paid a loan access mitigates declines and spending on food,
mortgage payments, and home repairs in an average period. However,
I find that access to pay day credit reduces well being.
Loan access reduces spending on non durable goods overall, and
reduces housing and food related spending particularly. So it's not
an inherently bad thing to offer short term loans like

(01:01:41):
this to people who have had a disaster hit them,
like a hurricane funk up their house or what I mean.
I I understand that, But at the same time, if
that happened, like if the natural for natural disaster did
occur and a family or a person needed money immediately,
in what in what world does the majority of these
p well like Because they have to pay back the

(01:02:02):
loan pretty much immediately or very short shortly after they
borrow it, so they won't rack up interests. So if
they don't have a hundred dollars a week ago, why
would they have it the next week to pay it back?
You know what I mean? Like it feels like some
they would have to borrow from other companies, even they
would have to keep having loan after loan after loan,
unless unless, unless, like they're they're truly just waiting for

(01:02:27):
their paycheck, you know what I mean, and if that
paycheck can can help them in the end. But I
don't know, just it's a it's an evil cycle. It
is an evil cycle. And like I think, what what
Doughbridge found is that like the only people for whom
it wasn't an evil cycle, where the people with regular
paychecks that just got delayed because like something fucked up happened,
or like you know, the government shut down, Like a
lot of people used payday loans, and I'm gonna guess

(01:02:49):
those people were less hurt from it than like the
very impoverished tended to be. So like the primary communities
preyed on what studies have found, the primary communities where
paid a loans operate in our neighborhoods with higher minority populations,
lower education levels, and more poverty. They're also particularly common
in the families of U. S Service personnel um and

(01:03:10):
in fact, studies have found that access to paiday loans
reduces job performance of soldiers and lowers retentions levels of
of US military personnel as well. So that's fucked up. Yeah,
it's super fucked up. Yeah that like, uh, we take
advantage of the people that are trying to serve us.
That that's like the like one of the number one

(01:03:31):
uh like customer bases of the payday loan industry as
soldiers who can't make ends meet. Yeah, kind of messed up,
fucked yeah. I mean it's already fucked that they take
advantage of marginalized people. That's already fucked as it is
because oftentimes communities that are impoverished are by default have
a large marginalized community. Because that's just like the systematic

(01:03:52):
racism at work. But it's that's just layers of fucked
up after layers are sucked up. I wait, but are
the interest rates any better now? Are they just as bad?
They're better than like no one charges what Scott Tucker
was charging. You're not seeing thousand percent and interest rates,
but like five to six something, seven hundreds sometimes percent

(01:04:14):
is still pretty pretty normal. I think is more like
that's a lot, Yes, that's a lot of money. Yes,
that's not fair. Here's where things get really convoluted, shrine um,
because as I how could it get worse because I
was I wanted to end this with like a big
dump of statistics I found on how bad uh paid

(01:04:38):
A loans were, and I I put, I already read
a few of those to you. I definitely found some,
but I also found a bunch of studies saying that
they were good, uh, and that they don't hurt people,
and that they don't primarily target minority communities and that
so you mentioned the natural disasters, Yeah, so I you know,
Like one place I wound up at was like a

(01:05:00):
website called Journalists Research, which is an actually really useful
little site that summarizes research on a subject. And they
had a bunch of links to like summaries of payday
loan studies, about half of which said payday loans were
bad and about half of which sounded like this quote. Uh.
Chentel Desai at Virginia Commonwealth University and Gregory Ellie House
and at Federal at the Federal Reserve found that a

(01:05:20):
Georgia ban on payday loans hurts locals ability to pay
other debts. They conclude that payday loans do not appear
on net to exacerbate consumers debt problems and call from
more research before new regulations are imposed. So you run
into a lot. I ran into a lot of stories
like that. Um As I dug around more, I started
to worry that I might have found made a mistake
and focusing on the payday loan industry as a bastard.

(01:05:42):
I found a Freakonomics article titled our payday loans as
evil as people say It's cited a lot of that
same research, and came to the conclusion that actually, everything
is fine in the payday loan industry, and the growing
calls to have the government regulated are short sighted. Look
at all benefits in some way. Give me, give me
a moment, Give me a moment owned by the k brothers.

(01:06:05):
I dug around a little little bit more, and then
I came across a Washington Post article titled how a
payday loan industry insider tilted academic research in its favor.
So the article uh starts in two thousand thirteen, when
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Obama was preparing
to lay out a sweeping series of regulations to make
the payday lending industry less of an abuse of nightmare.

(01:06:27):
Henry Miller, who was an attorney who works in the
payday lending industry, reached out to a professor in Georgia
and asked if she'd be interested in testing the number
one criticism of the paiday loan industry, which is that
its customers are hurt by its loans, according to the
Washington Post quote. Over the next year, Miller worked closely
with Jennifer Lewis Priestley, a professor of statistics and data
science at Kinnesaw State University, suggesting research to site, the

(01:06:50):
type of data to use, and even lecturing her on proofreading.
Punctuation and capitalization are somewhat random, he said in a
February email, responding to a draft of the report. You
might want to have your maiden aunt, who went to
high school before nineteen sixty read this. So the fuck
I know he was a man splaining fucking the English language.
He sure was, and she let him do it because

(01:07:11):
he was giving her a thirty dollar grant to publish
the study. And this is a different Henry Miller than
the one that wrote like tropic of cancer, right, Yes,
this is not the Henry Miller. This is the Henry
Miller who was a shill for the payday loan industry okay, cool,
yeah our Hillary, Hillary Miller, Um Henry but one l
yeah um. Priestley's report ultimately concluded that taking out repeated

(01:07:34):
payday loans did not and according to the emails, Miller
discussed the results with a CFPB economist. It's unclear how
it factored in the bureau decisions, but it has been
repeatedly touted by paid a lending supporters. So basically, Priestley's
report concluded that payday loans were actually not bad for people,
and that that wound up going to the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau UH and and being weighed in and their

(01:07:56):
decisions as to whether or not to regulate the industry. Now,
oh my god. Priestly's report is only one of the
pro payday loan sources I ran into when I was
trying to figure out how bad UH the industry was,
and the post lays out a pretty damning story of
industry academic collusion here. In exchange for that thirty dollar grant,
Priestly gave Miller and his payday loan industry bosses shocking
control over her work, and one December email, Miller asked

(01:08:19):
her to change the way she analyzed data about borrow
where credit scores. Priestly responded, I am here to serve.
I just want to make sure that what I am
doing analytically is reflecting your thinking. The email ended with
a smiley face when the report was yeah. When the
report was published, it noted that Miller's nonprofit, which was

(01:08:40):
essentially a mouthpiece for the payday loan industry, did not
exercise any control over the editorial content of her paper,
But when The Post interviewed her, Priestly admitted that she
offered to share authorship of the report with Miller, and
he declined. Now, one of Hillary Miller's goals for his
pet academic was to have her attack the idea that
payday loan's trapped people in an unending cycle of debt.
Two fourteen Consumer Financial Bureau study found that most borrowers

(01:09:03):
are forced to renew their loans so many times that
they pay more in fees than the actual amount they borrow.
In March of two fourteen, Miller sent Priestly an email
asking her to avoid the term cycle of debt in general.
We do not accept the notion that a cycle of
debt even exists, and I would appreciate it if you
would delete all references to this term unless you are
rebutting its existence. Oh my god, Priestley did as she

(01:09:27):
was asked, who is this asshole? I mean that just
trotted onto the scene like what she's where does? You
could almost say she's kind of like the people who
are being taken advantage of the payday loan industry, and
that she needed a chunk of money quickly, and she was.

(01:09:49):
She was, she was caught in the cycle. Yeah yeah,
and they I mean, I mean they're not charging her
interest for the thirty grand I'll give them that. But well,
that is still fucked shade. And that is a that's
in modern that's like recent, that's a recent thing. You
were researching it the other day and you yeah, we're

(01:10:13):
about to get some other person is going to be
researching like whether or not the should take out a loan,
and they're going to come across an article being like
they're not that bad, and then they're gonna just it's
going to continue. It actually gets a lot more infuriating
than that. Oh my god. Okay, let's hear it. So,
according to the Washington Post quote, as the publication of
the study neared, Miller congratulated Priestly on her work. Priestly

(01:10:35):
study found that paid a loan customers who repeatedly borrow
money over a long period have better financial outcomes than
those who borrow for a shorter time. These borrowers also
benefited from living in states where paid a lending wasn't
heavily restricted. The report found, this is a terrific paper,
he said in April email. When it is done, you're
going to be famous and your phone will ring off
the hook. The group was developing a strategy for releasing

(01:10:55):
the report. He said, we want them to believe that
the results are honest, verifiable, and most portantly correct. Now
sharene If this was just one cooked study, it would
be damning, but not damning of all of the different
studies that I came across that seemed to have positive
things to say about the pay day loan industry. But
of course it wasn't just one study. The Huffington Post

(01:11:16):
published an article in two thousand fifteen that discussed the
payday loan industry interference into multiple studies, including a two
thousand eleven paper do payday loans trapped consumers and a
cycle of debt? One guess as to the paper's conclusions.
Here's the Huffington Post quote. The email show that the
payday loan industry gave economics professor Mark Fussoro at least
thirty nine thousand, nine twelve dollars to write his paper

(01:11:37):
and paid an undisclosed sum to his research partner, Patricia Cerrillo.
In response, the industry received early drafts of the paper
provided line by line revisions suggested deleting a section that
reflected poorly end payday lenders, and even removed a disclosure
detailing the role paid a lending played In the preparation
of the paper. Fusaro cut two critical findings from his
paper at Miller's behest. First was a finding that payday

(01:11:58):
loan borrowers tended to have freequent debt over drafts and
the debit overdrafts in the period before their loan. This
looked bad for the industry because one of their chief
claims that most borrowers could afford the loans they were
stable people dealing with emergencies. Obviously, if people were failing
to pay their debts prior to getting a paid a loan,
then it makes it seem like the paid a loan
industry is just taking advantage of people who are having

(01:12:19):
financial difficulties. In an email, Fusorrow's coofered author told him
quote Hillary called me the other day for an update.
I told him about where we were in data collection
and also this other finding. I suspect he isn't too
happy about that finding and pointed out it wasn't the
original objective of the study. I acknowledge that they cut
this finding. Miller also had them cut a chunk of

(01:12:39):
the author's note, which would have disclosed that paid A
lending companies had helped to write the study. Here's a
quote from Miller in an email he sent to them.
The unnamed paid A lenders and the unnamed blind reviewers
do not need or want your thanks. It will actually
undermine the lenders objectives and participating in the study. If
you do so, so, that's cool. I I think just
the phrase objective of the study is already just like

(01:13:02):
does not make any sense. You don't make a study
with an objective. You study too to find the correct response.
You know what I mean? Like, if you go into
a study quote unquote with an objective, you're already skewing it. Yeah,
it makes no sense. The objective of science is to
arrive at the truth through the testing of like observable phenomena.

(01:13:26):
Not that's what I'm saying exactly, it's you don't have
an objective going in that doesn't make any fucking sense. Yeah,
it's frustrating. It's the same people that like fact check
fucking scientists when it comes to climate change. They just
make up their own definitions of what the words facts mean,
what the words study means, and then people just buy

(01:13:48):
into it because they haven't learned this new definition that's incorrect. Now,
dream you may not remember from way back in two
thousand eight, but one of the things that President Obama
ran on when he was first running for election was
that he was going to reform the paid a loan industry. Uh.
And he spent years and years and years as president
having the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau figure out a list

(01:14:11):
of rules that they could kick into place to essentially
wipe out the payday loan industries it currently exists. Uh.
And near the end of his term, they finally like
hit upon exactly what new restrictions they needed to put
in place. Um. Now, they announced these restrictions in two
thousands seventeen, and they were expected to reduce paid A
loan volume by sixty UM. So this would have been

(01:14:33):
a massive hit to uh an incredibly slimy industry. However,
a couple of months ago that the new restrictions should
have hit in August of two thousand nineteen, but very
recently the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Trump changed
course and scrapped most of the proposed changes the Obama
administration it's spent years putting together and preparing to implement.

(01:14:54):
According to the Motley Fool quote, the CFPB will get
most of the rules that previously sought, leaving only modest
changes to paid A lending practices. The one rule that
remains impacts lenders collection of loan payments. Most borrowers pay
by automatic bank drafts. Under the new rule, after two
failed withdrawal attempts, lenders would have to get authorization for
any additional withdrawal attempts, and that's it. Everything else gets

(01:15:15):
to stay. The article. Also, so the things that Obama
tried to implement since he was elected in two thousand
and eight were it was gonna be like until last August,
like like eleven years later, like well, I mean it
took like it took Uh, yeah, it took a long time, um,
like long enough for Trump to overturn it. Basically, yeah, exactly. Um.

(01:15:38):
And it's it's worth noting that in April of two
thou eighteen, not that long before the CFPB changed its rules,
the paid a loan industry trade group, the Consumer Financial
Services Association, held its annual conference. You want to guess
where they held there, two thousand eighteen annual conference? In
my butt hole? I don't know. No, not not in
your butth hole, but in the Trump National Dooral Golf

(01:16:00):
Club in Miami. That's that's the same place. Yeah, yeah,
it is. It is a butt hole, that's for sure.
It's now all of our buttles. Ah. How you feeling sharing?
I mean, more therapy is what I'm feeling. But you know,
there are moments where you have such little faith in

(01:16:23):
humanity that you're just like, what's the point? Why why
am I still here? Um? And I'm glad that coming
onto your show really makes me think of my life
as such a meaningless blip in in a white man's game.
So thank you for that. Robert, Well, you're welcome sharene I.

(01:16:44):
You know, hope is as toxic as cigarettes. According to
uh to most World Health Organization reports. So is that
in a recent study, was that their objective to find? Okay, yeah,
it was actually funded by the paid a loan industry. Um,
so you know it's good. But if this entire episode
was just like a huge ad for like the payday loan,

(01:17:06):
Like what if like you were sponsored actually at this point,
I would be nothing would surprise me if you were actually,
if you were actually like Scott Tucker, Sun or some
ship well you know, Sharine, if you really do need
a short term loan, Americash can can leave you a
thousand dollars, no questions asked and interest rates less than

(01:17:26):
you know, and that's that's pretty low. Nine hundreds of
smaller number than a thousand, So you're kind of making bank.
Those are numbers that that are smaller than the other
you know, those are numbers. Those are numbers. That's actually
the motto of Americash. You know. You know, um, you know,
like when you strain too hard on the toilet and
like maybe pop out of hemorrhoid or two, and your

(01:17:50):
asshole becomes unredeemable, an unredeemable as that is Scott Tucker,
he is an unredeemable asshole, and he's just a you
can't go back after that. You can't. You can maybe
you could tuck in a hemorrhoid or two on a
good day, but most of the days they're just like,
have you have a little tag, just just flopping in

(01:18:10):
the wind. I might say, I might say that Scott Tucker,
like the whole payday loan industry is an unredeemable asshole,
and Scott Tucker is one particularly flappy hemorrhoid. Yeah, yeah,
I like that metaphor. And then on the next episode
of The Magic School Bus, We're gonna go straight into
the asshole. We're gonna be the enema, the enema going

(01:18:37):
right in before a really uh rigorous uh, just a
night of really crazy strap on pegging. Um, I'm pissed.
When I'm pissed, I talked about, butts you talk about
when you're pissed. I'm starting to realize this, which is pegging,

(01:18:59):
is not don't don't, uh don't. It's a fun it's
a fun time. I'm sure. I'm sure you. I'm sure
you'd be open to it. I think if I know
anything about you, you'd be open to pegging. I have
I have no issues with pegging. Pegging is much more
ethical than, for example, the payday loan industry. I agree.
And if can we get sponsored by pegging the concept

(01:19:21):
of pegging, Yeah, we'll just try to just get a
strap on sponsor. I will. I'm just trying to make
myself feel better. I'm trying to make myself feel better
after this awful decision I had to come on your
show again. So, um, I'm thinking of pegging. Well, I'm
thinking that next we should talk about Jacob Wohl for
like an hour. How does that feel A nice palate cleanser, Yeah,

(01:19:45):
nice palate cleanser. I mean those of you have that
have been following the show probably remember me from being
on the other Grifters episode. Um, and like last week
or something, the tweets about there are first episode together
there with Jacob Ball and the Grifters started getting a
lot of like retweets and comments again, so I was like, Oh,

(01:20:05):
I guess he's like in the news. So I'm curious
what you have for me today for update me on
this on this fucker's life. Well sharene you and I
will have that conversation in a manner of minutes. But
for our listeners. It will happen on Thursday when they
hear the next episode Behind the Bastards. So before we
break for that, do you want to plug some plug
doubles which is different from pegging pegables? UM, you know,

(01:20:28):
anal plugs are also a thing, but not today. Today,
I'm going to plug the podcast. I co host Ethnically Ambiguous.
It's a fun time. UM. I co hosted with my
friend uh Anna Hosni. I was gonna say Anna, but
we can call her both um. And we talked about
Middle Eastern experience in the US, being daughters of immigrants,

(01:20:51):
and we also have fun guests on just like me
that I'm a guest on this one. UM, that's what
podcasting is, okay. Anyway, you can follow us on Ethnically
am am B on Twitter, Ethnically am B, Ethnically am Big,
m B I G on Instagram, and I'm Shiro Hero
on instagram s h E e r O h E
r O and Twitter at Shiro Hero six six six.

(01:21:13):
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode more than I did,
and I hope that you enjoyed this episode more than
I enjoyed. Reading about paid a loans Um. You can
find me on Twitter at I right, okay. You can
find this podcast on the twin Instagram's at Bastards pod.
You can find our website with all the sources for
this at behind the Bastards dot com. I have another

(01:21:35):
podcast called it Could Happen Here, and it's about the
Second American Civil War, which, after an episode like this,
seems almost more optimistic than just letting some of this continue.
But it's not. It can happen here, can happen? It
could happen here? Aspirationally? Um, but no, it's a super
big bummer. It's very sad. Uh. That's oh. You buy

(01:21:56):
T shirts on t public dot com. You can also
get some pay day loans from t public dot com. Um,
enter the code Robert Evans and you'll get like a
nine h yeah versus a thousand percent. Yep. We'll knock
a p off of that interest rate for you. That's
all I got for today, Sophie, would you toss some

(01:22:16):
bagels angrily against the wall for me? Just at that
it ricocheted off the wall and landed right back into
her lap. It was a beautiful thing. Physics is a
real Fantasysics is fantastic. That was the first remote bagel
throwing that I think anyone has ever engaged in, so
you know we're This is a ground breaking show, ground

(01:22:37):
breaking show, and until next week's groundbreaking episode. I loved
about

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Payday Loan Industry Is Bastards All The Way Down