www.kansascity.com/…
Paraphrased EXCERPT: Scott Tucker, the Leawood businessman and professional race car driver who built a financial empire through an illegal payday loan enterprise featuring egregious interest rates and falsification of business interests-including paying off reservation chiefs to pretend he was conducting business on reservation property, received a 16-year, 8-month prison sentence on Friday, January 5, 2018.
U.S. District Court Kevin Castel of New York sentenced Tucker on 14 criminal counts related to a $2 BILLION dollar payday lending enterprise called “Mister Money”, as well as other “Fast Cash” payday loan marketing schemes of the same nature. The same thing happened with Buy-Here-Pay-Here Car dealerships, Rent-a-centers, etc etc etc.
Tucker’s NetFlix documentary expresses the sentiments of the same people he ripped off and he sheds crocodile tears throughout about how horrible the government was to him without his “safety net” while he simultaneously started a business to steal from others who had no “safety net” either.
It took five weeks of wasted taxpayer dollars to convict Tucker and put him where he belonged for a second time after he spent only one year doing time for bank fraud in the early 1990s.
Tucker’s attorney and co-defendant, Tim Muir, was sentenced to seven years. Tucker’s brother, Blaine, also one of his business partners, committed suicide shortly after the business losses put him out of commission with a threat of imprisonment hanging over his head.
“For more than 15 years, Scott Tucker and Timothy Muir made billions of dollars exploiting struggling, everyday Americans through payday loans carrying interest rates as high as 1,000 percent,” said former acting deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joan Loughnane in a written statement. “And to hide their criminal scheme, they tried to claim their business was owned and operated by Native American tribes. But now Tucker and Muir’s predatory business is closed and they have been sentenced to significant time in prison for their deceptive practices.” Loughnane is now a partner at the law firm of Sidley Austin, LLP as of August.
Though Tucker, $400 Million dollars worth of predatory loans later, still maintains that he did nothing illegal.
It wasn’t even the fact that his enterprise was not against the law at the time, it was the fact that he sidestepped state laws and charged usurious interest rates by withdrawing interest payments that were never applied to the principal balance. It didn’t matter that he circumvented the non-existent (as long as it’s not illegal I can do it) laws, what mattered is that he set out to intentionally steal from the people who could least afford to be stolen from.
Tucker’s representatives say that loan terms were spelled out in plain language and customers were fully disclosed, but the problem is that when a Truth in Lending says the TOTAL amount you pay back on a $600 loan is $750 and you find out later that the $750 you paid was just a down payment against what amounts to a $3000 loan on the $600 … bells, whistles, alarms and everything else tend to go off.
Mainly, they should have been told up front in PLAIN LANGUAGE that the payback on the $600 loan was $3,000 so they would be perfectly clear — but “Mister Money” knew damned well he could NEVER have gotten a client on those terms, so they had to ‘hide it by showing it in such a manner as to deceive’ so they could take advantage of people.
NOTE: The purpose of the TIL (truth in lending) and the GFE (good faith estimate) is to give you an idea off the top what you are in for so you are comfortable and know what you can and cannot do in the process of paying off the loan.
When it becomes a debt trap, Tucker, nobody gives a flying freak that your 15 paid in cash race cars got taken by the federal government when their ONLY small-dollar paycheck was taken by YOU and likely caused them to lose their one and only beat-up piece of shit car that they probably weren’t even finished paying for.
Gilbert’s Ruse
According to the Department of Justice, Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortage (and also owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers) is absolutely guilty of predatory lending on FHA home loans the same way Scott Tucker was found guilty of ripping off customers for borrowing small-dollar payday loans.
Tucker would have had no issue whatever with someone knocking on his victim's doors taking everything they own, or with having the authorities knock on their doors and threaten to lock them up for not paying off these loans, but he and his wife are on this Netflix documentary called “DIRTY MONEY-Season 1, Episode 2: Payday,” crying and tearing it up about all the things that happened to THEM after they were found guilty of stealing from and destroying people who were in the same position or worse because of what he had done.
The fact is: They would not have shed a single tear for the people they stole from when their cars were repossessed, or when their homes were taken in order to pay for his ten homes. NOT ONE.
Same thing with Dan Gilbert.
“We haven’t done anything illegal, but we’ve been accused of it,” says the scam artists. Uhm, yeah, it didn’t have to be written down in Code to be ILLEGAL — even the misleading Truth in Lending statements that said people still owed hundreds AFTER the loan was paid in full as agreed.
As Gilbert runs like Tucker tried to run, saying things like “I am very sorry that our government leaders castigate me as a villain, or some type of predator,” Gilbert continues to work the post-Obama Trump-degraded consumer system by playing himself out as a victim with no regard whatsoever for the people he victimized.
Tucker was sued by the FTC and for filing a false tax return, as well, to the tune of more than a billion dollars total, and he wants us to cry about having his “babies” (the race cars) taken away, and every penny of his money removed for what he calls a ‘number in a box’ (the T.I.L.). But we already know that he would not have cared one whit about the people holding the number in a box who were being ripped off.
Piece BY Piece
Tucker used terms like “being buried for life,” and yet he was burying others under mountains of debt “for life,” people who could never have afforded to pay $3000 for a $600 loan and he knew it when he did it. He and his wife and his supporters were crying about having done to them the very same things they had done to others, about being put in the position they put others in. [~THE WEALTH OF THE WICKED IS STORED UP FOR THE RIGHTEOUS, though.~]
Gilbert, by the same token, runs a predatory lending real estate lending firm where he claims certain loans were “cherry-picked” by the FED/Justice Department, but it was the most low-income and most vulnerable borrowers who were eligible for FHA insurance because of their lower income who were “cherry picked” because they were the initial targets from the start.
Gilbert had a systematic leg for screwing taxpayers out of FHA insurance money AND for taking their homes — because once the loan terms MATERIALLY changed financially, be it escrows or interest or appraisal-stuffing, the people they stiffed would NOT be able to make the loan payments. It was calculated to foreclose on them in two years with an immediate cash payout for Quicken at taxpayers expense, thus causing the taxpayers to have to pay continually over and over again for the lifetime of the now-dehomed borrower, who will ultimately spend the remainder of their lives on government assistance.
The taxpayers don’t just lose the insurance money, they are now having to take care of the people Gilbert put on the streets. Someone who was taking care of themselves prior to is left with no other option but to be a government deficit and dependent to the very end.
The Trump F-Up Is In Order
Sadly enough, Trump, who -unlike President Barack Obama- could care less about anyone other than himself, is not the type of legitimate president who would try to protect American consumers from unsavory loan shark types such as Gilbert and Tucker and others of their ilk.
Trump is almost certain to help Gilbert run from his responsibilities in predatory lending in ways that President Obama would never have tried to help Tucker, now deftly in prison where he belongs.
Gilbert should be forced to share a cell with Tucker — for life.
Bank Robbers
“All of this hubbub over some short term loans over the Internet, really?” he asks.
Well, DUH. Those weren't just little short term loans, they were the same EXACT kind of thing that is equivalent to ROBBING A BANK except the “bank” was a lot of low-income human ATMs with small paychecks and low income.
The only difference really is that the law allows the poor to be ripped off where if you do it to the rich, it really is illegal.
The same thing done to a rich person would have put Tucker in the same position he is in now, and it is more than obvious that President Obama was fully in consumer protection mode during his term of office.
Now, Dan Gilbert is going to be allowed to get away with the same thing that put Tucker in prison because this is what a Republican economy always does — expects that if people allow themselves to be ripped off, they should be.
On the converse, if a company allows itself to rip people off, its CEOs should be imprisoned. They should be.
Government-Blaming while committing fraud
Tucker says he blames “the government” for killing his brother, Blaine, but any of his clients who killed themselves over being ripped off by Mister Money would not have gotten the same respect or sorrow from any of the Tuckers. From NONE of them.
All they would have said is “That’s really crazy anyone would kill themselves over that small an amount of money. There’s really nothing we can do about that, they should pay their bills and these things wouldn’t happen to them.”
The shedding of tears needs to be transferred to the people who cried about the losses they experienced because of Mister Money. They were severely hurt and devastated by the most repulsive and repugnant business of these predatory lenders.
They could not have credit cards, debit cards, loans, or buy cars, and most had no friends or families to help pay their bills as Tucker ‘s wife said she did.
In the case of Quicken, the consumers are having their homes taken from them — and no one seems to care at all. There is no consideration for the embarrassment or humiliation of their loan victims. NONE.
Who sheds tears for THEM? For their children? For the good men who just don’t happen to get rich by coming up with financial marketing schemes and scams like Tucker and Gilbert?
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