Scott Tucker found guilty of running criminal payday loan empire

Nobody on Wall Street has gone to prison for the outrageous and plainly criminal behavior that destroyed the world economy in 2008, but take comfort in this late-Friday-afternoon news: Kansas City’s very own Scott Tucker has been found criminally guilty of running an illegal $2 billion payday-loan business. 

Tucker and his attorney, Timothy Muir, have been on trial for the last month in the Southern District of New York. They faced a smorgasbord of criminal counts — money laundering, fraud, racketeering, and illegal debt collection — related to the payday-lending operation Tucker started more than fifteen years ago in Overland Park, Kansas. Today, it took a jury only five hours to deliver guilty verdicts against Tucker and Muir on all 14 counts. 

We’ve, uh, been waiting this one out for a while now. 

“As a unanimous jury found today, Scott Tucker and Timothy Muir targeted and exploited millions of struggling, everyday Americans by charging them illegally high interest rates on payday loans, as much as 700 percent,” Joon H. Kim, acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney, said in a statement. “Tucker and Muir sought to get away with their crimes by claiming that this $2 billion business was actually owned and operated by Native American tribes. But that was a lie. The jury saw through Tucker and Muir’s lies and saw their business for what it was — an illegal and predatory scheme to take callous advantage of vulnerable workers living from paycheck to paycheck.”

Yep, pretty much!

Bloomberg, which had a reporter at the courthouse, reports that Tucker and Muir could be staring down as many as 20 years in prison. “The U.S. also seeks to seize at least $2 billion from Tucker, including a property in Aspen, Colorado, a Learjet, six Ferraris and four Porsches, claiming they were bought with proceeds of crime,” according to Bloomberg. 

Indeed, they were! 

A lawyer for Tucker told Bloomberg Tucker intends to appeal. Tucker is also appealing the $1.3 billion fine leveled against him last year by the Federal Trade Commission. 

There is a lesson here for prosecutors. Ordinary people — people who sit on juries — fucking hate payday lenders. What they do is indefensible! And, in many cases, they’re obviously breaking the law. So, start charging more of them criminally. Put their asses on trial. Convictions are obtainable. 

Enjoy your weekend.