Scott Tucker

Tucker was using corporate accounts whose ownership he misrepresented to pay for millions of dollars spent on personal items like a vacation home in Aspen, Colo., and a Ferrari racing team. The FTC believes that Tucker has made at least $419 million from his various enterprises, and probably more than that. He was sentenced in January 2018 to 200 months in prison for operating a nationwide internet payday lending enterprise that systematically evaded state laws for more than 15 years in order to charge illegal interest rates as high as 1,000 percent on loans. Tucker’s co-defendant, Timothy Muir, an attorney, was also sentenced, to 84 months in prison, for his participation in the scheme. The defendants formed sham relationships with Native American tribes and laundered the billions of dollars they took from their customers through nominally tribal bank accounts to hide Tucker’s ownership and control of the business. From at least 1997 until 2013, Tucker engaged in the business of making small, short-term, high-interest, unsecured loans, commonly referred to as “payday loans,” through the Internet. Tucker’s lending enterprise, which had up to 1,500 employees based in Overland Park, Kansas, did business as Ameriloan, f/k/a Cash Advance; OneClickCash, f/k/a Preferred Cash Loans; United Cash Loans; US FastCash; 500 FastCash; Advantage Cash Services; and Star Cash Processing (the “Tucker Payday Lenders”). These firms routinely charged interest rates of 600 percent or 700 percent, and sometimes higher than 1,000 percent. These loans were issued to more than 4.5 million people in all 50 states, including more than 250,000 people in New York, many of whom were struggling to pay basic living expenses. Many of these loans were issued in states, including New York, with laws that expressly forbid lending at the exorbitant interest rates Tucker charged. Tucker, who was born in Kansas City and attended both Rockhurst High School and later Kansas State University, spent a year in prison in Leavenworth after a 1991 conviction for fraud. Tucker grew up with two brothers. One of them, Blaine Tucker, was involved in Tucker’s payday lending business. Blaine Tucker committed suicide in Leawood in 2014. Tucker’s other brother, Joel Tucker, was recently hit with a $4 million penalty resulting from a case the Federal Trade Commission filed against him last year. The FTC claimed Joel Tucker was selling fake payday loan debt portfolios to debt collectors. That resulted in consumers receiving phone calls from debt collectors for debts they did not actually owe. The FTC had accused Joel Tucker of invoking his brother Scott Tucker’s payday lending business brand names as a way to convince debt buyers that the portfolios were legitimate. Another defendant in Tucker’s and Muir’s case, Crystal Grote, had pleaded guilty in August to a count of lying to federal regulators during a separate investigation. Grote, previously an employee with Tucker’s business, had admitted to giving misleading information during the FTC case.