Paraphrased EXCERPT: Scott Tucker, the Leawood businessman and professional race car driver who built a financial empire through an illegal payday loan enterprise, is finally where he belongs. In prison.

The predatory lender used tactics which featured egregious interest rates and falsification of business interests-including paying off reservation chiefs to pretend he was conducting business on reservation property. His sentence, well-earned was 16 years and 8 months as of Friday, January 5, 2018.

U.S. District Court Kevin Castel of New York sentenced Tucker on 14 criminal counts related to a $2 BILLION dollar payday lending scam enterprise called “Mister Money”. Tucker also had many websites across the Internet with “Fast Cash” payday loan marketing schemes of the same nature. The same thing happened with Buy-Here-Pay-Here Car dealerships, Rent-a-centers, etc etc etc.

Tucker’s NetFlix documentary expresses the sentiments of the same people he ripped off as he sheds crocodile tears throughout. “The government is horrible.” “We have no safety net.” But he never thought about how horrible he was in private and how his business to remove the safety nets of others without repercussion was where the entire thing started.

It began with him, just as predatory home loans are Gilbert’s fault as well.

It took five weeks of wasted taxpayer dollars to convict Tucker and put him where he belongs for a second time. Prior to this, he spent only one year doing time for bank fraud in the early 1990s. That is, for him and for Gilbert, unmitigated gangster-ism. It should be illegal even if there ARE NO laws to define it. The idea of it should make it illegal for all of their kind.

Tucker’s attorney and co-defendant, Tim Muir, was sentenced to seven years. Tucker’s brother, Blaine, also one of his business partners, committed suicide shortly after the business losses put him out of commission, also with a threat of imprisonment hanging over his head.

But how many people likely committed suicide because of them? Or at least thought about it? The universe has a way of paying back to those to whom it is due.

Exploitation Central

“For more than 15 years, Scott Tucker and Timothy Muir made billions of dollars exploiting struggling, everyday Americans through payday loans carrying interest rates as high as 1,000 percent,” said former acting deputy U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joan Loughnane in a written statement. “And to hide their criminal scheme, they tried to claim their business was owned and operated by Native American tribes. But now Tucker and Muir’s predatory business is closed and they have been sentenced to significant time in prison for their deceptive practices.” Loughnane is now a partner at the law firm of Sidley Austin, LLP as of August 2018.

Tucker, $400 Million dollars worth of predatory loans later, still maintains that he did nothing illegal. It wasn’t written down in stone, but it was morally and ethicalluy illegal and he knows it.

Likewise, Gilbert also feels that if it isn’t spelled out completely within the parameters of some codified section of the law, he, too is non-guilty of any transgressions. However, most poor people, especially those who are poor and Black, end up being their victims.

Given US history, this is allowed as long as the victims are not rich and white. They know that the laws are written to protect rich white skin and persecute and prosecute everyone else who isn’t them, but just because the law is not spelled out, it should not empower them with the arrogance to believe it’s okay to cheat people and walk.

That is what makes MORE laws totally and absolutely necessary, so it will be from now on. Tucker’s take-down should haunt Gilbert everywhere he goes and ride him until the devil he deals with becomes his master.

“I did nothing wrong.” : Well … Neither did the people you stole from, Tucker. Neither did the people you are still stealing from now, Gilbert.

He sidestepped state laws and charged usurious interest rates by withdrawing interest and fees that were never applied to the principal balance. It didn’t matter that he circumvented the allegedly non-existent laws, what mattered is that he set out to intentionally defraud people who could least afford to be stolen from.

His kind cause constant poverty and homelessness, and from this, many are led to the brink of committing suicide themselves. Where are the tears that he shed for them?

The Hitch

Tucker’s representatives say that loan terms were spelled out in plain language and that customers were fully disclosed, but the problem is that when a Truth in Lending says the TOTAL amount you pay back on a $600 loan is $750 and you find out later that the $750 you paid was just a down payment against what amounts to a $3000 loan on the $600 … bells, whistles, alarms and everything else tend to go off.

Ooops – they should have read the FINE PRINT. It shouldn’t have been in the FINE PRINT in the first place. The disclosure should always be up front and visible and conspicuous, or the intent to deceive is clear.

Mainly, they should have been told up front in PLAIN LANGUAGE that the payback on the $600 loan was $3,000. But “Mister Money” knew damned well he’d never have a client with those kinds of terms. People in a bad economic situation won’t take the time to read when the TRUTH IN LENDING document as applied says their TOTAL PAYBACK is $_____ and it gets changed in the processing fees.

NOTE: The purpose of the TIL (truth in lending) and the GFE (good faith estimate) is to give you an idea off the top what you are in for. You are assumed to know what you are comfortable paying off, but the intent is that you will never pay it off until they’ve gotten a 5,000% profit and more.

When it becomes a debt trap, Mr. Tucker, nobody gives a flying freak that your 15 paid in cash race cars got taken by the federal government when their ONLY small-dollar paycheck was taken by YOU. You cause them to lose their one and only beat-up POS car that they weren’t even finished paying for…and you didn’t shed a tear on their behalf.

But while we’re speaking of poverty not having a color, keep in mind that it would take poorer whites to complain about the theft before poorer Blacks would have a day in court. The racism applied to poverty is wide open for the world to see.

GILBERT’S RUSE IS THE SAME AS TUCKER’S

According to the Department of Justice, Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage (and also owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers) is absolutely guilty of predatory lending on FHA home loans the same way Scott Tucker was found guilty of ripping off low-income struggling customers with small-dollar payday loans.

Tucker would have had no issue whatever with someone knocking on his victim’s doors taking everything they own, or with having the authorities knock on their doors and threaten to lock them up for not paying off these loans. Yet, he and his wife are on this Netflix documentary called “DIRTY MONEY-Season 1, Episode 2: Payday,” crying and tearing it up about all the things that happened to THEM afterward. They were found guilty of stealing from and destroying people who were in the same position or worse because of what was done, and fortunately his wife and mother have privileged white skin, or they’d be in there with him for helping to spend it.

The fact is: They would not have shed a single tear for the people they stole from when their cars were repossessed, or when their homes were taken in order to pay for his ten homes. NOT ONE.

No one should shed a tear for any of them when the graves that they plan for others are the ones they are buried in.

Same thing with Dan Gilbert.

“We haven’t done anything illegal, but we’ve been accused of it,” says the scam artists.

Uhm, yeah, it didn’t have to be written down in Code to be ILLEGAL. The misleading Truth in Lending statements (TILs) that said people still owed hundreds, thousands, AFTER the loan was paid in full as agreed.

As Gilbert runs like Tucker tried to run, saying things like “I am very sorry that our government leaders castigate me as a villain, or some type of predator.” “I am not a crook and I won’t settle,” Gilbert continues to work the post-Obama Trump-degraded consumer finance system by playing himself out as a victim with no regard whatsoever for the people he victimized.

Tucker was sued by the FTC and for filing a false tax return, as well. The predatory loans weren’t the only thing he was guilty of. He wants us to cry about having his “babies” (the race cars) taken away and about every penny of his money being removed for what his wife called a ‘number in a box’ (the T.I.L.). But the ignorance on the part of them all is the “number in the box” is SUPPOSED TO BE THE BOTTOM LINE, not the FINE PRINT below it.

The people holding the “number in a box” are the ones we should all be crying for.

PIECE BY PIECE BIT BY BIT

Tucker used terms like “being buried for life,” and yet he was burying others under mountains of debt “for life.”

They could never have afforded to pay $3,000 for a $600 loan and everyone knows it. Yet … in Scott’s case, the Word of God prevailed. [~THE WEALTH OF THE WICKED IS STORED UP FOR THE RIGHTEOUS.~]

Gilbert, by the same token, runs a predatory lending real estate practice, but he claims certain loans were “cherry-picked” by the Justice Department.

Yet, Quicken “cherry picks” the most vulnerable FHA clientele to rip off in the first place. Get the insurance money from the taxpayers, get the house and any equity left in it, and run. The hell with them. Create another government dependent who was working to take care of themselves and voila!. That’s supposed to be the end of it.

Systemic Theft

Gilbert had a systematic leg up for screwing taxpayers out of FHA insurance money AND for taking victim’s homes. Once the terms of the loan MATERIALLY change, be it due to interest, escrows, or appraisal-padding, the people they stiffed would NOT be able to make the loan payments and they knew it from the start.

The idea is to force the foreclosure within two years or less by switching the loan terms and payoff amounts later rather than being upfront about it. This results in an immediate payout from HUD and the taking of the borrower’s home at the same time.

The taxpayers don’t just lose the insurance money, they are now having to take care of another welfare dependent for life. It ain’t the person they steal from who is the only one who gets screwed.

As long as America allows it, American deserves more deficits and more welfare dependents, period.

THE TRUMP F-UP IS IN ORDER

Sadly enough, Trump, who -unlike President Barack Obama- could care less about anyone other than himself, is not the type of legitimate president who would try to protect American consumers from unsavory loan shark types such as Gilbert and Tucker, and others of their ilk.

Trump is almost certain to help Gilbert run from his responsibilities in predatory lending. President Obama would never have tried to help Tucker, now deftly and decidedly broke and in prison where he belongs.

Gilbert should be forced to share a cell with Tucker — for life.

GILBERT AND TUCKER ARE THE SAME AS BANK ROBBERS

“All of this hubbub over some short term loans over the Internet, really?” he asks.

Well, DUH, ni&&er. Those weren’t just “little short term loans”, they were the same EXACT kind of thing that is equivalent to ROBBING A BANK. But now “the bank” is a lot of low-income human ATMs with small paychecks whom you don’t think deserve the grace of their own humanity while you beg for yours.

The only difference really is that you, sir, don’t think that what you do to others should happen to YOU.

It is now blatantly obvious that President Obama was in full consumer protection mode during his term of office. The racial slurs lodged against him from Russian and criminal enterprises and from non-thinking Black folks were in support of worse criminals than they could ever hope to be. And it was all in the name of “rich people just outsmart the rest of us.” Until it happens TO THEM, that is.

Now, Dan Gilbert is going to be allowed to get away with the same thing that put Tucker in prison. This is what a Republican conservative economy always does, it’s all they know to do – cook up schemes to rip people off coming in and going out the door in a revolving cycle.

Yet … If it wasn’t for us, their ungrateful gaslighting twisted asses wouldn’t have a DIME.

GOVERNMENT-BLAMING WHILE COMMITTING FRAUD

Tucker says he blames “the government” for killing his brother, Blaine, but any of his clients who killed themselves over being ripped off by Mister Money would not have gotten to blame the government for not protecting them from him.

All they would have said is “That’s really crazy anyone would kill themselves over that small an amount of money. There’s really nothing we can do about that. They should pay their bills and these things wouldn’t happen to them.”

The shedding of tears needs to be transferred to the people who lost out because of “Mister Money.” And because of Quicken/Rocket. They are repulsive and repugnant, and as much time should be spent hurting for them as they spent cooking up scams.

Tucker’s wife laments over her “credit cards, debit cards, loans, or ability to buy cars,” but she also lets you know that she has friends and family paying her bills. Most of the people her husband ripped off don’t even have the luxury of friends and family with that kind of money, and even if they did – they would likely receive no help from them. She is blessed beyond measure to have friends and family to keep her from becoming the homeless woman that they made of to others.

In the case of Quicken, the consumers are having their homes taken from them without any repercussion for their actions in predatory lending against the FHA.

There is no mutual no mutual consideration for the embarrassment or humiliation of their loan victims. NONE. And in Tucker’s case he isn’t showing a sign of remorse and basically states that he wants to get out of prison so he can do it all over again.

If Donald Trump really wants to win over Black folks without some notorious Black evangelical ass-kissers pretending he’s all that and a bag of cherries, then he needs to make SURE Gilbert goes to prison just like Tucker. He needs to make certain that Gilbert’s Quicken/Rocket victims are justly compensated to the tune of their losses. He’ll get re-elected in 2020 even without Russian interference this time.

Setting the Captives Free

Why put Tucker and Gilbert in the same article and flip-flop between the two of them? Because they are one and the same. They are all alike – they want tears for the tears they never shed for others. Birds of a #thievingass feather flock to-thievingass-gether.

Poverty costs this country a hell of a lot more than the mechanisms to end it.

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DAILYKOS: Banned for speaking the truth, DailyKOS are not the liberals they claim to be, nor are they “Democratic.” They are underground racist and ultra-conservative.