I do taxes during the season, and there’s a certain amount of short-term lending that goes on. We are strictly forbidden to lend to service members, and my understanding was that only the government can do so. Looks like there’s few loopholes. Isn’t it amazing that somebody would search out the - I think there’s two loopholes working together here - and combine them to exploit soldiers who, generally speaking, are very young and not very savvy and too busy and too far from home to defend themselves?
This is the kind of thing even a totally dysfunctional congress should be able to address.
The first thing that came to mind when I read the article title was: “What about the SCRA?” But then I read a bit further.[quote]This looks like somebody who has really, really researched the best way to get around the entire intent of the SCRA.[/quote] We call it “predatory lending practices” nowadays, but there is a reason that usury has been considered a moral crime since antiquity.
Is that any different than how most places that sell on credit deal with people that don’t pay? Do they typically sue borrowers in their own home states rather than in the lender’s?
This is the sort of thing that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was supposed to protect against, except that Republicans in Congress have been fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from doing its job. They stalled Obama’s appointment to the head of the Bureau for two years to protect companies like USA Discounters.
Everything’s a dollar in this box.
Shouldn’t stories like this appear in Stars & Stripes or Army Times or whatever official newsletters soldiers read? Teaching them about basic personal finances and predatory lenders should be just as much a responsibility as feeding them and teaching them how to drive tanks or whatever.
Together the three companies have filed 35,000 lawsuits in a little under a decade.
That’s 35,000 people who are righteously outraged, in various states of financial desperation, at higher risk of PTSD and all trained to kill. I wonder if these companies really thought through their long-term strategy here.
both are credited to propublica
No luck with ArmyTimes
Trace the owners, CEO, board of directors and give their addresses to any service man who would like to speak with them. There really is no bottom for these kind of scum bags. To prey on such vulnerable people is absolutely soulless.
What? No deeply offended champions of Free Enterprise popping up to tut-tut the irresponsible spendthrifts who signed a contract after all!
I’ve read about this kind of crap being pulled on civilian poor people. The impossible-to-make court date is an awful twist, as is the appeal to patriotism via names and logos.
For many years my apartment mailbox got deliveries of a service-person-targeted mail order catalog. I never thought to look it over; I bet the Big Savings were imaginary.
sigh
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