What’s worse than a payday loan? Not much, but one thing that is worse is a fake payday loan. The FTC has taken action against a group of firms they say bilked consumers out of tens of millions of dollars by putting through electronic funds transfer requests for payments on loans that never existed. The companies allegedly used personal information gathered by sneaky means to drain the bank accounts of  its victims.

I ran into a couple of instances of fake payday loans when I worked for UAW Legal Services. It wasn’t the scam artists that troubled me the most in these cases, it was the banks who refused to follow proper procedures when customers made claims of unauthorized withdrawals.  If you find that your bank account has been tapped to pay for payday loans real or fake without authorization, I suggest that you start taking steps to close your account.  Once they have your information, they can start fake transfer requests again using multiple corporate identities.   Below are the company names listed in the FTC press release. There could be many more.

The complaint announced today was filed against: 1) CWB Services, LLC; 2) Orion Services, LLC; 3) Sand Point Capital, LLC; 4) Sandpoint, LLC; 5) Basseterre Capital, LLC (based in both Nevis and Delaware); 6) Namakan Capital, LLC; 7) Vandelier Group, LLC; 8) St. Armands Group, LLC; 9) Anasazi Group, LLC; 10) Anasazi Services, LLC; 11) Longboat Group, LLC, also doing business as (d/b/a) Cutter Group; 12) Oread Group, LLC, also d/b/a Mass Street Group; 13) Timothy A. Coppinger, individually and as a principal of one or more of the corporate defendants; and 14) Frampton T. Rowland, III, individually and as a principal of one or more of the corporate defendants.