Online Payday Lenders Sued Over Unsuspecting Borrowers

Bloomberg
Wednesday, September 17, 2014

A federal judge shut down two online payday lenders operating under the umbrella of the Hydra Group after the CFPB and FTC said they extracted more than $36 million from customers who never agreed to loans. The operations bought personal data about people who were researching loans at other websites, deposited unsolicited money in their accounts and debited finance charges that exceeded the amount of the deposits. When some consumers tried to stop their banks from debiting the money, the companies produced fake loan documents testifying to the debt. The lenders made mostly unsolicited loans totaling $125.3 million while extracting $161.9 million from bank accounts.