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"I Lied To Get A Loan, And Now It Is Forgiven" - UK's Largest Payday Lender Just Wrote Off 330,000 Loans
While the Obama administration is furiously scratching its head how to write off the debt of a few hundred million Americans, so they can once again load up on debt from scratch, spend like drunken sailors, and blow up the system once more, others are already a few steps ahead, such as UK's largest payday lender, the Wonga Group Ltd., which we learn today has written off the debt of 330,000 customers after British regulators introduced tougher rules to "protect consumers" such as Master Elliot Gomme, 20, who admits he lied to get a loan: "the 20-year-old admitted lying on his application and told Newsbeat it was "too easy" to be accepted."
This is how wholesale debt forgiveness is done: as Bloomberg explains the Wonga agreement applies to loans that wouldn’t have been made under new tightened lending criteria and that have been in arrears for more than 30 days, the London-based company said in a statement today. The company is writing off 220 million pounds ($356 million) in loans, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information in private.
“The need for change at Wonga is real and urgent,” Wonga Chairman Andy Haste said in the statement. “Our regulator is determined to improve standards in consumer credit, and I share that determination. There is much to do in order to make Wonga a sustainable and accepted business, and today’s announcement is a significant step forward in that process.”
The U.K. payday loan market is being reviewed by the Financial Conduct Authority after a government survey found providers weren’t fully compliant with standards designed to protect consumers. Wonga, CashEuroNet UK LLC and Dollar Financial U.K. Ltd. are the three largest U.K. payday lenders, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Wonga also said today that about 45,000 customers who are less than 30 days in arrears are being given as much as four months to repay their loans without interest and charges.
Which is great news for Master Elliot Gomme, who admits he lied to get a loan. The best news: he now doesn't even have to repay it! Here is his story:
When Elliot Gomme needed money for a holiday, like many people he turned to payday lender Wonga. He needed £120 and says he didn't have a problem convincing them to lend him cash saying he was in full-time work.
But the 20-year-old admitted lying on his application and told Newsbeat it was "too easy" to be accepted.
He's now likely to be one of 330,000 people whose debts will be written off after a ruling that Wonga lent money to people who couldn't repay it.
"My bank couldn't give me an overdraft or anything, and so I went to them [Wonga]," he says.
He received his money and went on holiday, but a few weeks later he says the firm started calling him and he says they were "constant". "They were ringing me every day," he says. "They were telling me how much I owe and that there was added interest."
Elliot says that a few months later he was being told his debt had risen to more then £800 and it began to affect his day-to-day life. The longer it went on, the more he says he worried he would get about his situation getting out of control.
* * *
Elliot is likely to be one of those to have his loan cancelled and says it's come as a relief. He says the amount of the debt was making him feel depressed and that he had "no idea" what he would have done if this ruling hadn't come.
Or, as the New Normal Dostoyevsky would say: crime, and no punishment.
In short, great job Elliot: you too have now joined the endless line of banks, corporate executives, deadbeats, Obamaphone-addicts and so on, who have managed to "lie" your way to some cash, and gotten away with it with zeroh punishment.
In the meantime, all those other taxpayers, who diligently, and idiotically keep paying their taxes to afford the crony bailout funding of the entire gamut from welfare queens to bailout recipients, are (and if they aren't they should be) wondering: "why the hell do we still keep paying the government?"
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The " Wonga Group"...
lol
usury is enslavement disguised as legitimate business... all debt based currencies are usurious. the entire eCONomy is based on fraud and lies. time to change the script, hang the money changers.
The debt is unpayable. This will crash. There are more of us than them.
http://fredgassit.tripod.com/fred005.gif
us and them?
I am still working, paying, supporting...
I forget..am I us or them?
am I still the good guy or am I now the usurious creep who made the funds (my savings) available for the loan? If I have cash in the bank I guess I'm by extension, the lender. When I was shelling out the money for the loan I was the good guy, as soon as I asked for my money back I became Satan's best bud?
You keep your money in a bank? Wow, my mom told me skydiving was risky but you sure got me beat there. At least I know my stack will still be there tomorrow morning. And the next. and the next. Ad infinitum.
Jubalee!
Most of the Wonga loans forgiven have been paid off several times over, the loans having interest rates of at least several hundred per cent plus those ever present late penalties. Anyone sticking up for these loanshark pals of PM David Cameron doesn't remember when Mafia loansharks went to prison for usury. Cameron is running for re-election and he knows his close association with Wonga could hurt him. Left out from the news is any mention of current lawsuits against Wonga for seizing funds from the bank accounts of the wrong people, people who had no Wonga loans, victims of identity theft. Wonga's founders left with a fortune from their loanshark activities, enough to buy yachts all around. Soon, Wonga will be no more, taken over by another company.
Sharks fucking leeches, and getting fucked back by leeches.
The only thing that would make this better is if the sharks got fucked out of repayment but the leeches still had to pay and have their currency destroyed instead of going to the sharks(or viruses [government]).
Wonga - unlike banks - can't magic up credit out of nowhere and lend it out. They have to borrow (at market rates) before they can lend.
The hoohah about 'payday' lenders is driven cheifly by the banks, who - despite being able to borrow at 0% - don't want to compete with companies that are effectively acting as deposit banks.
wonga is an agent of the usury system... wtf should anyone care if the usury masters throw their servant under the bus? wonga can take its complaints to its masters, who pulled the debt from thin air. if it comes down to people or servants of the money changers, i know what side I take.
Wonga use their profits to fund the Tory party who bring in policies that force people into needing Wonga's product.
I'm glad someone finally stood up to their bullshit.
"usury is enslavement"???
Rubbish. These are freely arrived-at agreements between willing borrrowers and willing lenders except that the borrowers committed fraud by LYING. What right does government - a third party - have to interfere at all???
Exactly. Does anyone here feel the slightest sympathy for poor, depressed little Elliot, the fraudulent, lying deadbeat? Wonga should have sent "da boys" to collect.
Americas student loans coming next.
Perhaps on a pretend basis, but never in totality. There's no way they'll loosen the grip on that stranglehold.
Perhaps they'll reform it in a new version of 21st Century servitude?
and the IRS will also tax any loan forgiveness as 'phantom income'. the point of debt is to enslave, and it costs them nothing to do it... so throwing the slaves a debt jubilee once in awhile only deepens the (mental) enslavement... 'see, our masters love us, really'....
"Perhaps they'll reform it in a new version of 21st Century servitude?"
They already are. Look at yesterday's article about the new bill in congress to forgive student debt it you..... wait for it..... work for the government.
Whew, luckily the value recieved for Education dollars is so much higher....
Only in a way discriminating against productive whites.
Colored parasites forgiven first. Reflexively. Without even a single form to fill out.
Oct 2014
October 2016
loan forgiveness (in exchange for D votes) now or October 2016?
Fuck, I'd borrow money just to take them up on that. Then I'd do my part to stimulate the economy by turning it around and spend it into the economy for a nice rifle or some silver, or both. R or D, the two pieces of bread that make up the same shit sandwich.
sign me up...
Good, it couldn't have happened to a better group of people...... well Jamie Dimon in handcuffs would be good. I have no sympathy for payday vultures. I certainly am not going to hold anything against some poor working stiff whose buying power is being inflated away thanks to central banking policy for lying to get a few Euros.
Hammering payday lenders just means desperate people can't borrow at all. Is that what you want?
What I want is a fed who isn't inflating away people's buying power to begin with.
Payday lenders aren't helping anyone, they are just prolonging death.
Please tell us a heart warming payday lender story that helped some down and out bloke to become a millionaire overnight. If there is one, guy gets corzined in the end.
I could tell you a story about a payday lender who helped a young FSA member go on a nice, relaxing vacation after he defrauded them...
As opposed to how it's working now? Yes.
I don't want poor people to get loans they can not repay.
I don't want middle class people to get loans they can not repay.
I don't want the rich to bet loans they can not repay.
I do not like them in a house, I do not like them with a mouse. I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere.
Earned dollars competing with borrowed dollars in the market. The idiot and his borrowed dollars bid prices too high and the earned dollars cannot compete. The earnt dollars pay too much or go without.
When an idiot is allowed to borrow too much money, he enslaves those who are wise with their money.
I see the "poor" and "middle class" get loans. . . but the rich BET 'em! that's a subtle difference, yes.
upvoted for a wry smile.
Only on Zero Hedge, can I read a comment defending payday lenders.
Been saying for a few years now someone please tell me strictly from a rational and not ethical economic perspective why one should pay their mortgage?
Default on mortgage. Bank dumps mortgage on Fed/ECB/Tooth Fairy/Flock of Unicorns.
Unless you have been paying it already for say 5+ years it might make sense, it not like the Bank didnt't conjure the money from thin air anyway.
I'm not per se advocating this but yes especially any ahem "mortgage" originated say since the creation of MERS.
While we're at it why do we have to pay taxes? Why can't we just have the Fed print new "money" and wire it to the peeps so the IRS can pull its rape from there? Sounds sustainable to me.
The homeowner is responsible for property taxes, even if paid through the lender.
Default leads to non payment of property taxes.
The property ends up on the delinquent tax rolls, and is offered for auction by the respective county, for the amount of taxes owed only.
Once the new owner is established, and property is still occupied, sheriff is called to evict any and all non owners from the property, and it is re-secured under the new ownership.
Tax delinquent owner is generally pursued again, especially if there was work done on the property, and where property leins were discharged.
It's a lose, lose, lose situation for the delinquent property owner.
One may wish to review one's local property laws before making that decision.
so, even if one stops paying the mortgage,
one should continue to pay property taxes,
and then wait for the bank to produce the paperwork proving ownership
and legal right to evict ?
Greece didn't get that option.
FSA RULES BITCEZZZZZZ
Now he must feel like a real sucker for not having borrowed 2000 instead of the measly 120
Elliot got hassled by phone every day cuz his lying was incomplete < never give them your real number, dummy >
Eliot wil be back when he takes his next vacation. Where the heck can you go on vacation for 120 of any currency? That can't even cover hooker and blow.
Where do I sign up for one of these 'dont have to repay loans'?
Dammit
If you live in a state where payday loans are illegal, get an internet one. Close your bank account right after they deposit it so they can't take anything out. Dispute it on your credit report because it's an illegal loan. Free money.
Aww...some shlub lied to get loan and he's cast like a welfare queen asshole for doing so. Meanwhile our innovative "finacial sector" created all kinds of scams to sell loans and mortgages they knew would tank, then bundled them and shorted them as they sold to their clients. And then they get bailed out to the tune of trillions without a single shyster going to jail.
We have naked shorting, paper gold, derivatives and all the rest of the innovative financial bullshit of today's world, yet we have this guy over here who lied to get a loan and he's a bad guy. This whole financial system is corrupt to the core folks and it's been that way for some time. Get over to petty finger pointing and endless bitching.
Yep.. a few hundred here and there, chump change...
He could have gotten a house here with that much creativity...
A £120 principal which magically exploded into £800 in several months gets written off. OMG! Death of free markets! /sarc
Somewhere in New Jersey, Paul Krugman is smiling...
and somewhere in the bowels of the great vampire squid, Lloyd Blankfein is continuing to do "god's work."
why i think when the next downturn hits ... it won't be mild
squatters and such made out like bandits with slap on the wrist to credit. Many defaulters have already gotten new credit.
Next go round, look for many to throw in towel early. Why struggle to pay? Just default and wait a couple of years when all is forgiven.
Personal responsibility ...where did it go???
Companies like Wonga specifically target poor people. People who cannot even borrow £20 from a friend or family. Then they charge them with 5853% APR. Wonga is a criminal enterprise, comparable with drug dealers. If you complain about Wall Street and the FED, then should not defend Wonga.
Personal responsibility is equally FIAT
It went overseas.
Ask Jamie Dimon. That's why he's richer than you.
Anyway you cut it he is part of the problem
Ban interest period...
ie, ban lending? Good 'thinking' there, bud.
Islamic banking is interest-free.
Now Jewish banking on the other hand...
Do I pay off my kids student loan or not? Keep thinking I will but now if you get public service jobs Govt. pays it off and who knows we may get wholesale write offs if enough kids stop paying. Kind of like immigration. Make the unlawful act so big they cant do anything about it.
Paid my daughters off and now I feel stupid.
My cunt sister in law stopped paying her mortgare in 2008.
Still hasnt been kicked out.
I on the other hand am a sucker who thought houses were a bubble and now and pay $1300 rent every month.
:(
Living responsibly is increasingly a suckers game it woud appear.
I'm establishing massive unsecured debt and paying it off every month, when the hammer comes down my monthly patyments will stop and a gold dealer will get a VERY BIG bullion sale from on my credit cards. Then its sailing I go where my boat will undoubtedly sink under the weight of it's cargo.
The "New Rules of Money" will explain a lot:
http://youtu.be/WRy4to0Fzos
LOL!! I feel your pain. I to also have a cunt sister n law who has a sugar daddy that pays for everything. This bitch has filed BK several times in the past and just keeps spending like she is a millionaire.
This article doesn't mention that Wonga targets people who need £10-50, meaning poor people who should never get a loan in the first place. Second, their interest rate ist as high as 5853% APR. Yes 5853% APR, that is FIVE THOUSAND PERCENT.
It's a deal since their bookies charge more.
Debt forgiveness may be in the air in certain localities, but when socialism hits the wall of realism, survival forces the people to fight back.
The prostitutes of legislators and other governments who have given public employee unions everything they wanted until the pension plans are bankrupting the governments are seeing the pushback in a big way. Stockton, California’s bankruptcy is bringing a bench mark judicial decision which will change the public employee extortion game, perhaps forever.
Federal Judge Rules Stockton Must be HONEST In Its Dealings With Pension Bond Buyers
October 1, 2014 By Stephen Frank
Yesterday was special. A Federal Judge ruled that a city government, Stockton had to be honest. In these times that is a radical and revolutionary decision—just look at Barack the First and our confused Guv Brown.
Stockton went bankrupt. It sold bonds to help pay for its pensions obligations—an extremely expensive way to do this. Then when the city went belly up, it decided it was going to pay CalPERS all that it owed and stiff the bond buyers—who had a contract. The Judge rules all creditors had to be treated the same. CalPERS is a sleazy, greedy, corrupt operation that wants money, regardless of who it steals from or harms.
Of course CalPERS is going to ignore the ruling, like Obama ignores the Constitution.
“To get out of bankruptcy, the city of Stockton may, if it wants, slash the pensions of retired city employees rather than ask an investment fund to take its offer of a penny on the dollar for what it’s owed, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Klein has ruled.
If upheld at the appellate level, the ruling could be seen as historic and could impact public employees throughout the state.
“This ruling is not legally binding on any of the parties in the Stockton case or as precedent in any other bankruptcy proceeding and is unnecessary to the decision on confirmation of the city of Stockton’s plan of adjustment,” CalPERS says in a written statement issued while the judge was still hearing oral arguments Wednesday afternoon.”
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/
This will certainly discourage millions of other unqualified debtors from applying for a loan/mortgage.
Haha...more likely, it will ENCOURAGE them! Just like student "loans"...
I'll be back - terminator movie
Simply the next generation of Robo signing fraud. Bet they are trying to pass Basel III. Let's have a look at the Federal Reserve working in cohoots with the Bank of International Settlements.
They seem all like intimidating scary agency, a automatic NATO rife will make them dance and plead guilty.
Basel III Disarray, Muni Advisers: Compliancehttp://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-02/basel-iii-disarray-muni-advi...
Thank God we have new terrorism threats to keep this issue quiet. Ebola, ISIS, ISIL, and the Clintons telling us that Al-Cia-da is still active after taking down Bin Laden /Osman Hussain
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3FbL8WDtrYI
Them is big numbers, but any place charging 5,000% interest is in the habit of writing off 1/3 to 2/3 of their loans anyway.
... btw the artificially intelligent ecosystem of Internet advertising very cleverly displays what else but shyster loan companies on both sides of this ZH story.
The corruption starts at the top. Much of the financing in the U.S. for brick-and-mortar payday lenders comes straight from the country’s biggest insider banks.
Staying one step ahead of the regulators and fearing a regulatory crackdown, the Big Banks in January began to kill their high-interest predatory loans after pocketing an average of $500 million in fees for the banking industry every year, according to one 2010 estimate.
Think Progress writes that “the decision to forgo that revenue — which is almost risk-free since the lending bank can simply deduct the interest charged on the loan from the account holder’s next deposit -- suggests that banks fear that the loans are on the wrong side of consumer protection laws that are just beginning to be enforced in the marketplace for paycheck advances,” like in Utah and Alabama.
Said TP: “Four of the country’s largest commercial banks are ending their “deposit advance” programs amid fears that the high-interest, short-term loans will get caught up in a broader crackdown on the previously unregulated payday lending business.
While the federal effort primarily targets brick-and-mortar payday lenders, says TP:
“Despite these differences, the outcomes for consumers are similar. Bank deposit advance loans typically charge annual interest rates of between 225 and 300 percent — lower than the 300-500 percent rates typical of payday loans, but still high enough to trap borrowers in perpetual debt cycles. Half of all bank deposit advance program users took out more than $3,000 in advance loans in a single year, and spent more than 40 percent of the year paying the loans back, according to the CFPB. Like with traditional payday loans, the paperwork on bank deposit advance programs makes it somewhat difficult to understand exactly what fees will be charged and when, and obscures the financial harm that can arise if a borrower uses the program very often.”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/21/3186891/banks-end-payday-lending-deposits/
Debt is self-imposed slavery.
Only for those of us who fear we have to pay it back.
there is only one meaningful default;
the destruction of the big new york money center banks.
unti then---all 'defaults' are systemically controlled by fraud and control of the courts and legislators such that only so many consumer and corporate defaults will be tolerated as do not threaten the banks.
in 2008 the banks own mortgage sector fraud finally came back to bite them. the fraud and theft WAS the bailouts. the banks were supposed to go out of business. ALL OF THE NEW YORK MONEY CENTER BANKS WERE SUPPOSED TO GO BANKRUPT.
instead the u.s. government's opportunity to take control over the banks was forfeited and the norm of fraud perpetuated on an even bigger scale.
every fraud , when it collapses, can only be 'solved' with more fraud.
Why not call it like it is, the banks and brokers lied to get/give these loans out, the borrower more than likely didnt even sign most of the time,
I keep wondering why the LIBOR rate-rigging frauds the banks perpetrated aren't declared prima facie contract frauds, rendering the contracts null and void. Never mind, I already know the answer.
Because even if a case like that entered the court system.
1) It would not see the light of day for YEARS
2) The banks own atleast 65% of the judges, and the other 35% of judges don't want to rock the boat and get kicked off the list of people in line to work for the mafia after they leave office (not all judges want to be judges till they are old) their retirement plan is to use their pull in the legal system to give perks to corporations that hire them to "fix" their court cases in their favor.
The odds of finding a "good" judge who would give such a case a fair shake is probably 1 in 7, and chances are you wont get that judge, because he is going to already be active/to busy to take your case.
Oh yes they did.
You no sign, you no money.
What you think ?
These guys stupid?
The lenders don't have to lie. Every bank gets a bite right down to the Fed who 'creates' the money.
The poor bastard who needs a new tranny in his car to get to work will never figure out that maybe he shouldn't have bought that new big flatscreen and iPhone with those other payday loans and should have saved some money instead.
That's how poor people stay poor.
Poor people stay poor because they get into debt and actually try to pay that shit off.
90% of people in middle class have defaulted on loans to get there, its just a fact, to get rich or atleast bumped into upper middle class, you have to use strategically timed defaults and be able to micro-manage legal preparation for the courts to combat the onslaught of powerless third party debt collectors.
There is no moral reason to "repay" a debt, when the people lending you the money stole it from you and everyone else in the first place anyway.
Strategic default is the tool of choice for wealth creation.
Why should someone pay off a mortgage to a bank who got bailed out to the tune of thousands of dollars per tax payer? what moral high ground do they have to demand payment? the only high ground they have is a fraudulant copy of a contract they lost that they predetorily got someone to sign, by selling them a bill of goods that 1) They didnt own in the first place to sell you and 2) That they knew you probably could not afford.
So quite frankly " fuck um" they deserve defaults AND PRISON!, not repayment!
Donald Trump on debt:
http://youtu.be/_VYB9bkK1N4
He would know. How many times has he declared bankruptcy? He's still rich!
Government should not be interfering in private agreements reached between willing borrowers and willing lenders EXCEPT when one party LIES. The borrower.
"No one can FAIL!" "No one must ever be SEEN to fail!" ~ Government.
This extensive corruption which involves the U.S. Congress soon is going to meet the public reality. The American nation cannot exist with this level of corruption. These big banks are not producers; they are takers. And they are taking the growth potential of the country.
These banks and criminal lenders are orchestrating and profiting from a wealth transfer from the producers to the non producers, the latter including themselves.
It is a direct attack on free enterprise, individual initiative and our constitutional form of government.
It began in earnest on January 15, 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson stated his intention regarding the Great Society:
“We are going to take all the money we think is unnecessarily being spent and take it from the ‘haves’ and give it to the ‘have nots’ that need it so much.”
This is what Blankfein means when he says he's doing God's work; he can decide from whom to steal and to whom to give it.
Socialism destroys limited government and imposes total economic control: high taxation, stifling regulation, and iron-fisted bureaucracy.
Socialism is Big Brother government.
"While the Obama administration is furiously scratching its head how to write off the debt of a few hundred million Americans, so they can once again load up on debt from scratch, spend like drunken sailors, and blow up the system once more,"
Really? You believe that the little people blew up the system? LMAO.
Liar Loans.
Why do you think that they named them such?
They knew that everything written on them were lies.
Let their businesses go under based on the riskiness of their business model.
If you get defrauded you deserve it? I'm sure you would apply that rule to yourself when you get defrauded...
these sob's have stolen ovomit's low info's game plan - can't they come up with their own scam
this sort of thread brings out a lot of handwringers, going on about 'personal responsibility' and such.
master elliot will have both his legs broken in the near future.... wonga sold the debt to guido
personally prefer bunga bunga over wonga
Wonga must have realised there was a mis-selling or some other balls up that stopped them pursuing the debt.
My question is: in what kind of normal society would companies like that ever be granted a licence? They're loan sharks fer chrissakes!
Wonga group has requested to hire some Predator Drones, the new ones that home in on mobiles. The fine you and when Wonga calls your Number the drone homes in and lets loose with a hellfire missile. It is a double incentive to pay up as if the drone also knows where you live it can use collateral damage in taking out your family and friends. So pay off your next loan quick
That’s good news for Wonga consumers who are lucky not to repay their loans. But of course when you apply for a cash loan it’s not worth to count on things like this. Actually I think that consumers should be more responsible when they apply for loans. There was a time when applying for a loan was a serious and long process, people considered all the pros and cons before borrowing money and understood all the responsibility they took. Today taking out a loan is easy and a lot of people just misuse it. I would advice consumers to think at least twice before making financial commitments. Then maybe some of them will stop complaining that they can not get out of a circle of debt.