Loan Sharks - looking for realistic, non-clichéd behavior.

[mdunnbass]

Hi everyone

Comments

[geniusofevil]

I was a loan officer for years at a borderline agency so I might be able to help. What kind of questions do you have?

[mdunnbass]

Well, I am still fleshing out the story, but the jist is that a group of 3 entrepeneurs are making a prototype, and pool their $$$ to fund it. One of them has a gambling problem, and secretly loses their cash. To keep the partners from finding out, he takes a fast cash advance from a loan shark, and weeks later still hasn't paid up

[geniusofevil]

For our business we did escalating harassment. We'd call at any time, any number we had, over and over. We'd call family and disclose info about the person and their debt that was illegal (in the US anyway

[mdunnbass]

Fabulous post, and insanely helpful! Thank you soo much!

[eleanorb]

I don't know how true it is for the US but in the UK he is more likely to be she. Most loans are to poor women with no other source of emergency money.

[mdunnbass]

I've seen a few articles on the BBC website about problems with women lately being forced into prostitution in order to pay off debts to loan sharks. Pretty scary!

[eleanorb]

And the best people to get them to take on loans are other women who they know and trust.

[anitabuchan]

Don't know about NYC, but I can tell you a bit about loan sharks in Glasgow - I work at a credit union, and part of what we do is try to work against loan sharks.

They're criminals, basically. They get their business various ways - go round knocking on people's doors, go to pubs, even hostels. They don't use any kind of contract. I've heard of interest rates of over 9000% (and no, that's not a typo). When people don't pay, as of course they often can't, threats of violence are generally used to try and make people pay up. One reason they can be difficult to catch and prosecute is because people are too terrified to pay up. They know that if they don't pay, or go to the police, it's almost certain that the loan shark will show up on their doorstep. This leads to people abandoning their homes to try and escape, but in doing so they're making themselves 'voluntarily homeless', and therefore low on the list when it comes to receiving government help.

'A loan for life, but if you don't pay it back with interest the Glasgow sharks will

[mdunnbass]

Thanks for the link, that article was fabulous, not just for it's information content, but also for seeing "cannot" and "nobody" spelled as "cannae" and "naebody" in a newspaper article. =)

Thanks