Josh Mitchem

In December 2006 Josh Mitchem filed articles of incorporation in Missouri for a company called Platinum B Services. In 2012, Dustin McDaniel, the attorney general of Arkansas, brought a lawsuit against that company and PDL Support LLC, another company controlled by Josh Mitchem. In the suit, McDaniel alleged that Josh Mitchem and his companies controlled a variety of LLCs, purportedly based in the West Indies federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, that were engaged in lending over the Internet to Arkansas citizens at interest rates as high as 644 percent. Arkansas law caps rates on consumer loans at 17 percent. Josh Mitchem denied any wrongdoing but agreed to stop lending in Arkansas and pay $80,000 to the state. Josh Mitchem was named in a class-action RICO complaint brought in California against about two dozen players in the payday industry (including MoneyMutual LLC and its spokesman, talk-show host Montel Williams). In it, Mitchem's company Rare Moon Media is accused in that state of unlicensed lending and of negotiating and signing marketing contracts on behalf of unlicensed lenders. Rare Moon Media was incorporated in Kansas in 2010. In 2011 and 2012, its filings with the secretary of state list Josh Mitchem, Steve Mitchem and Jeremy Shaffer, among others, as the primary stakeholders. Shaffer replaced Steve Mitchem as general manager at Tivol when Mitchem was promoted to president.