UPDATE: Local Payday Lender enters into $1 Consent Order with CFPB

ABSTRACT: 4 years after the CFPB brought an action asserting several claims against a Kansas City based payday lender, the parties have entered into a consent order that will result in the defendant paying a $1 fine.

An action filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri culminated after four years with a consent order that is catching attention due to its unusually small civil penalty, particularly in light of the severity of the conduct being penalized.

Richard Moseley Sr. and others, as well as a multitude of LLCs operating under his control (the “Defendants”), reached a consent judgment in the amount of $69,623,528, representing the amount of Defendants’ ill-gotten gains from their illegal payday lending scheme. But, in that same order, execution of the judgment was suspended upon certain conditions, including the following: (1) that Defendants agree not to participate in any further lending or financial services activities, (2) that they permit the CFPB to work with the Department of Justice to use funds from their bank accounts seized in a separate criminal action, and (3) that they each pay a civil penalty of just one dollar.

This anemic civil penalty was figured based upon affidavits and documents Defendants provided to the Bureau showing their lack of ability to pay the judgment amount, or apparently even a small fraction of it.

The consent order follows the recent criminal conviction of Moseley in the Southern District of New York for conspiracy, collection of unlawful debts, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and false disclosures under TILA. Among other things, Moseley and others charged illegally high interest rates, approaching 1,000 percent, on payday loans, took sensitive banking information of prospective customers who had not signed a contract for the loan and withdrew money from their accounts, and falsely reported that his businesses were based in other countries when they were actually operating in the Kansas City area.