Payday Loan Store Accused of Improper Practices
By J.J. CameronPayday Loan Writer
The Payday Loan Store of Illinois has seen better days. The payday advance company whose president is industry spokesman Bob Wolfberg, has been accused of improper practices at four of its 40 branches, according to an article in The Chicago Sun-Times.
This isn’t the first controversy to take place within Illinois involving the business of payday loans.
In this case, one charge involves a consumer using a Social Security number belonging to a dead person, according to an order of license revocation filed Friday. The order accuses payday loan stores of falsifying signatures and providing payday loans to people with invalid Social Security numbers.
All four stores discarded disclosure statements that stores must give consumers under the 2005 Payday Loan Reform Act, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations alleged.
“We’ve shut down four of the stores where these egregious cases come from, and we want to enforce in practice what the new payday loan act was designed to do,” Gov. Blagojevich said. He is pushing for new rules that he said he hopes will close loopholes in the legislation.
Wolfberg said he was targeted because he is president of the Illinois Small Loan Association, which represents 80 percent of payday lenders in Illinois and has opposed payday loan legislation.
“I see it as a pattern of harassment by the department against me,” Wolfberg said. Three of the stores are in Aurora, and one is in Plano, southwest of Chicago. Wolfberg said the Aurora stores had just been audited by the Division of Financial Institutions in the last week and that nothing was mentioned.
Dean Martinez, secretary of the IDFPR, said a former employee made the complaint. Martinez denied that Wolfberg was targeted.
“Personally, I wish it was somebody else,” Martinez said. “I have no control of a witness walking in to our institution and telling us allegations.”
The payday loan stores will be closed until they request a hearing date.
April 5th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
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April 6th, 2006 at 8:49 am
[…] Recent allegations against the Payday Loan Store of Illinois Inc. are merely the latest step in an effort by the state to reform short-term payday loan lending practices. […]