Illegal payday loan companies. Post your questions about specific lenders.

Heard of USA Cash Advance, Ace Cash, Elite Cash Advance, Berkovic Credit, 100DayLend, Cash4U, Easyquid, Geo Finance,  Best Loans Direct, CashFastUSA, Upper Canada Loans, Instant Phone Cash, Payday One, CF Group, American Finance Payday, Cash Express? There is one thing common with all these names! Instead of giving promised loans, they reportedly swindle consumers of their hard earned money.  If you have a question about the legitimacy of a lender or want to alert others about a loan scam, please post the details here.

The internet is milling with bogus lenders who offer short term payday loans as well as long duration loans. The crooks offer anything from few hundred dollars to 10 of thousands of dollars! It’s quite easy to offer loan, because the money is only on paper!  The crooks have only one agenda. Trap gullible loan seekers and get Advance Fees out of them.

Note: Scam artists are known to use names of well known, licensed lenders to make their offer look, legitimate. The scam becomes obvious when they ask Advance Fees to be paid by a cash card, Western Union or similar means, instead of by check or credit card directly to the account of the named company.

Stay away from Payday Loan Lenders, if you encounter following issues, to avoid losing money:

• You are asked to pay fees in advance
• You are asked to pay first month’s installment in advance
• You are asked to get Moneypak, Vanilla or other cash cards
• You are asked to send advance by Western Union or Moneygram
• The “lender” offers to credit money to your account even without a Formal Loan Agreement
• You are unable to locate & verify the physical address of the lender on the net
• You received an unsolicited email offering loan (that would be 100% scam).
• The Lender’s website do not have physical address which you can verify
• The phone number given by  the “lender” do not match with that at “their website”!
•  You are unable to verify whether the lender is licensed to lend.

Verify whether the lender is indeed licensed to lend in your state!

If you are in the US, every lender has to have physical presence in the State in which its lending. Don’t get fooled by callers  who offer loan on phone! That is absolute scam.  A  licensed lender should have a physical office as per regulations.

If you are in the US , to check whether  the company offering a payday  loan is registered and licensed to lend, visit the website  of CFA (Consumer Federation of America) at  http://www.paydayloaninfo.org/state-information. Select respective State. In the State’s page, click on “Licensee Database’  and search for the company by its name. For example, select California and search for “Moneytree”. You will find that this company is registered to lend and all   branches in California are listed with license numbers.

If you are in the UK, check whether the lender is registered with the Consumer Credit Register of OFT at http://www2.crw.gov.uk/pr/Default.aspx  before deciding to take loan

Were you conned or are you worried whether you could be conned by a lender? Post the details here.