77-year-old payday lender gets 14 years in prison for scheme
Source: Associated Press
Updated 4:34 pm CDT, Friday, July 6, 2018
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The head of a multimillion-dollar payday lending enterprise has been sentenced in Philadelphia to 14 years in federal prison for evading state regulations by using Native American tribes and a bank as fronts.
Charles Hallinan was also ordered Friday to pay a $2.5 million fine for the scheme to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in unlawful debt from high-interest loans.
Prosecutors say the 77-year-old Hallinan charged astronomical interest rates of more than 700 percent on the short-term loans.
Authorities say the scheme netted Hallinan's companies more than $690 million in revenue between 1997 and 2013.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/77-year-old-payday-lender-gets-14-years-in-prison-13055069.php
Charles Hallinan
Rich Main Liner Learns the Hard Way Not to Exploit Poor People
Of course, house arrest ain’t so bad when you’ve got a house like this.
by VICTOR FIORILLO· 11/28/2017, 12:22 p.m.
. . .
Villanova’s Charles Hallinan, a 76-year-old Wharton grad, was convicted this week on all 17 counts against him in a racketeering case surrounding a series of payday loan businesses he set up. The charges included international money laundering and fraud, among other offenses.
Now, if you’ve never lived paycheck to paycheck, you might not know what a payday loan is. Basically, a guy loans you $100 today and you pay it back on your next payday — sort of an advance on your paycheck. You don’t need a house or a car to use as collateral for a payday loan. You just need a job.
Sounds pretty legal, right? Right. What’s illegal, though, is charging super-high interest rates — a practice known as usury — and Hallinan had that end of things down to a science.
. . .
Hallinan ran his payday loan scheme from 1997 until at least 2013 under business names like Tele-Ca$h, Cashnet, Paycheck Today, and Instant Cash, most of which were headquartered in Bala Cynwyd. And he made a ton of money doing it. According to the Department of Justice, Hallinan’s companies raked in a mean $688 million in revenue from hundreds of thousands of borrowers.
More:
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/11/28/charles-hallinan-payday-loans-trial/
= new reply since forum marked as read
in amerika....always is. Those payday loan places target poor people, usually in 'urban' communities or depressed communities. Don't ask how I know...as a fixed income senior who faces a cash shortfall, every emergency, I can guess and rightly so. And with those shortfalls, always faced with difficult choices when faced with needing to pay bills, before credit is affected in this predatory capitalist system.
This system preys on those who usually through a series of bad breaks and unforeseen circumstance end up needing money for medical bills, car repairs,... and given that the credit rating system causes higher prices for the poorest of the poor people, from car insurance, rent, regular bank loans for houses, cars and a host of needed services to just be able to have a roof, food and phone. Pigs like this bastard of usury prey on misfortune of people.
Now, who's in charge of the mega money systems in this goddamn country? That's why race can always be inserted as well as me agreeing with you, these are just plain greedy, soulless "horrible persons".
Lock his slimy ass up. 
