InfoBytes Blog
North Carolina AG Announces $9 Million Settlement with Online Lenders
On June 21, North Carolina AG Roy Cooper, together with Commissioner of Banks Ray Grace, announced a settlement with two online lenders to resolve allegations that they violated state usury laws. According to the complaint, the lenders offered North Carolina consumers personal loans of $850 to $10,000 and charged annual interest rates of approximately 89 to 342 percent, significantly exceeding the rates allowed under state law. In 2015, Special Superior Court Judge Gregory P. McGuire issued a preliminary injunction to ban the companies from making or collecting loans in North Carolina. In addition to permanently barring the companies from collecting on loans made to North Carolina borrowers, the consent judgment requires the companies to (i) cancel all loans owed by North Carolina consumers; (ii) have the credit bureaus remove negative information on consumers’ credit reports related to the loans; (iii) pay $9,025,000 in refunds to North Carolina consumers, with the remaining $350,000 of the settlement allocated to covering the costs of the investigation, lawsuit, and administering the settlement; and (iv) cease unlicensed lending in North Carolina. The settlement represents North Carolina’s first successful action to ban an online payday-type lender that used affiliation with an Indian tribe in an effort to evade state usury laws.