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Ken Rees could be the CEO of payday lender Elevate together with previous CEO of Think Finance, the payday mortgage lender that Elevate spun away from in 2014. Rees and Elevate offer installment loans that they claim are a significantly better alternative than pay day loans. This claim will not endure, but, in light of Elevate’s exceedingly high rates of interest as much as 378.95per cent. Rees and Elevate have even recognized the high interest levels from the loans they give you, with Rees saying that they’re perhaps not providing “rock-bottom” prices additionally the terms and conditions of these solicitations acknowledging that the loans they supply can be an “expensive as a type of credit.” due to their astronomical rates of interest, Elevate raked in more than a half billion bucks in 2013 alone. In addition they showered over $210,000 of this money on federal lobbyists to try to hinder laws of this loan industry that is payday.
Through the years, Rees shows himself to be a shapeshifter as it pertains finding techniques online installment loans Virginia to evade state regulations that ban or limit payday advances. While at Think Finance he utilized the solutions of a rogue Philadelphia bank in a rent-a-bank scheme built to evade laws to give you illegal payday advances. If the bank they I did so it was power down by federal regulators, Rees came up with a solution that is different. He partnered with indigenous American tribes to obtain around state laws by claiming they had been susceptible to tribal legislation, in the place of state legislation. Their business has made vast sums of dollars under this “rent-a-tribe” scheme providing payday advances in breach of state regulations. This could quickly arrive at a final end however, as Pennsylvania’s Attorney General recently filed case against Rees, Elevate, and Think Finance claiming that their utilization of Native American tribes is really a breach of racketeering, customer protections and financing guidelines by deliberating trying to evade state regulations. Continue reading The Shapeshifter: Ken Rees of Elevate and Think Finance