A hallmark of television and online advertising is payday loans offering thousands of dollars fast and within hours of applying. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro tells us that not only are payday loan companies predatory, but so are the scammers appearing to be payday loan companies.

For the three years between July of 2019 and July of this year, the Better Business Bureau reported receiving nearly 3,000 customer complaints about payday loan companies with consumer losses of about $3 million.

During the height of the COVID pandemic and in the preceding months, once transmission of the virus slowed, the BBB received another 7,000 reports of loan and debt scams with amounts totaling $4.1 million.

Don O’Brien of the BBB says laws that govern payday loan companies can be challenging to follow due to not being uniform throughout the US.

“These payday loans, they’ve been a nuisance for a long time, now we’re to the point that some states are even banning them. I’m in the St. Louis office, I live on the Illinois side of the river, and you cannot operate as a payday loan officer anymore in the state of Illinois. It’s one of the 18-states that does not allow payday loans to be sold.”

Payday loans were outlawed in 2008 in Arkansas, although they remain legal in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. For 89 9 KRPS, I’m Fred Fletcher-Fierro