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October 28, 2013

Predatory Lenders Fight Regulators With Offer of $500 Visa Gift Cards

By Lee Fang

The Consumers for Choice site, registered in August shortly after the New York State and Department of Justice probe began, also does not disclose any information about who is behind the effort. The Contact Us page lists an address for Aristotle, a political website company. The only names listed on the site are Republican members of Congress who have issued supportive blurbs.

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Lenders are offering Visa giftcards to stop "reckless regulators." (Courtesy of Flikr user moneyblognewz. CC 2.0)

Visitors this weekend to Townhall.com were welcomed with a pop-up advertisement soliciting a petition against the Obama administration. "Help us send 1 million letters to stop reckless regulators," the ad beckons, atop images of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

The advertisement is sponsored by Consumers for Choices, a new group whipping up right-wing anger at the Obama administration for supposedly using his "Reckless, Elitist, Overzealous Regulators" to destroy "small-dollar" and tribal lenders. Visitors to the Consumers for Choices website, which is being advertised on conservative news portals like Townhall, are encouraged to contact their local representatives to send an angry pre-written letter. Consumers for Choices says their supporters will be automatically entered into a weekly raffle, with a grand prize $500 Visa gift card.

The advocacy website repeatedly references Western Sky Financial, an online installment loan company that recently suspended lending after being sent cease-and-desist letters from government agencies. Left unsaid on the Consumers for Choices site are the types of loans offered by the company, which feature interest rates of 355 percent.

A single $5,075 loan from Western Sky cost $40,872.72 to pay back -- more than eight times the original amount.

A commercial from the company featured a Native American woman exclaiming, "Making the six monthly payments is good for your credit profile!"

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently sued Western Sky Financial, CashCall Inc. and other online lenders for violating New York state usury laws, which cap interest at 16 percent for such loans. In August, the Department of Justice began investigating a broad range of banks that handle payments for payday and installment lending companies accused of deceiving customers and charging predatory interest rates.

Please go to The Nation to read the rest of this article.

Authors Website: http://thinkprogress.org/author/lee-fang

Authors Bio:
LEE FANG  Lee Fang is a  reporting fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. He covers money in politics, conservative movements and lobbying. Lee's work has resulted in multiple calls for hearings in Congress and the Federal Election Commission. His book on the campaign to block Obama's domestic priorities is slated for publication this winter.  Lee is a lifelong resident of Prince George's County, Maryland, and holds a B.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, Lee interned with ThinkProgress and worked as a researcher for Progressive Accountability. In college, Lee held internships with Media Matters for America, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and Westin Rinehart.

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