Scott Tucker arraigned in New York City, pleads not guilty to federal charges of racketeering
NEW YORK CITY — Online-payday-lending mogul Scott Tucker pleaded not guilty Tuesday here to federal criminal charges of racketeering in connection with unlawful debt collections.
Pleading not guilty to the same charges was Tim Muir, Tucker’s attorney and general counsel of AMG Services Inc., a business at the center of a payday-lending empire that was incorporated on tribal lands but apparently run from an Overland Park office tower.
The two men huddled in a back corner of Judge Kevin Castel’s 11th-floor courthouse in downtown Manhattan before their arraignment, chatting and chuckling while federal prosecutors and their attorneys worked out bail conditions. They sported dark business suits, in contrast to the athletic gear they wore at their first court appearance, in Kansas City, Kansas, after being arrested by the FBI the morning of February 10.
Authorities accuse Tucker and Muir of swindling consumers through convoluted short-term loans that racked up usurious interest rates. The enterprise’s nominal presence on tribal reservations allegedly allowed it to evade state lending regulations while Tucker ran up a fortune of more than $400 million.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Niketh Velamoor said the government will turn over millions of pages of documents to Tucker and Muir’s attorneys next week, including bank records, e-mails and other documents produced by AMG in response to a grand jury subpoena. Prosecutors also have records from tribal organizations and from payment-processing companies that facilitated the scheme, as well as a paper trail showing how the proceeds were spent.
Many of the documents come from a parallel civil case in Nevada in which the Federal Trade Commission alleges that customers of Tucker’s businesses have overpaid on their loans by $1.32 billion. Federal prosecutors in New York are also seeking a $2 billion forfeiture targeting, among other things, several Porsches and Ferraris belonging to the professional race-car driver.
After each defendant stood and pleaded not guilty, Castel set the next hearing for April 22. Tucker and Muir declined to comment as they left the courtroom.
Tucker’s Kansas City lawyer, Jeff Morris, was in court Tuesday, but Paul Shechtman, a well-known New York litigator who has been added to the defense team, did the talking. He was joined by Paula Junghans, a Washington, D.C.-based trial lawyer from Shechtman’s firm, Zuckerman Spaeder.
Morris and Junghans are well acquainted from their defense of former Westar Energy CEO David Wittig.
Muir is represented by Tom Bath.
