Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, he's a race car driver on a fast and

furious rise to the top of the payday loan industry.

We started building an online lending platform.

We built it into a multi -billion dollar brand. But Scott Tucker is selling high

interest predatory loans designed to bleed consumers dry.

They just kind of turned into piranha and just attacked my account.

He was targeting people who could at least afford it at the worst times in

lives. The customer dictated that they didn't have any other place to go.

He's making a killing as he fleeces more than $1 billion out of millions of

customers. All the fuel is high -octane lifestyle.

There's a lot of snakes out there, and Mr.

Tucker is damn sure one of them.

It's the American Le Mans Series in Laguna Seca, California.

And 49 -year -old payday loan entrepreneur Scott Tucker is behind the

facing a double -barrel challenge.

First, the racetrack itself, which is known as one of the world's toughest.

Laguna Seca is challenging because of the turns. The hairpins and the S's are

very, very tight, and they're difficult to navigate in traffic.

To get that car around that corner that fast with that speed and maintain that,

it's difficult to do. And it's a quick, easy way to spin out.

He's also got the law hot on his trail.

The feds are after him for allegedly ripping off consumers.

And they want to shut his business down.

But Tucker can't take his mind off the road.

Not as he heads toward a corkscrew at 100 -plus miles per hour.

Any race car driver will tell you if you're focused on anything else, that's

when you go off the track. If you're not in that moment in that car, that could

be death.

It's 21 years before this race when Scott Tucker first learns what a real

tailspin feels like. A failed criminal enterprise lands him here at Leavenworth

Federal Penitentiary in Kansas in 1991.

Only 29 at the time, he's convicted of mail fraud after running a scam under a

made -up company called Chase Morgan Stearns & Lloyd.

Tucker started this business where he's essentially telling people he can get

them loans, and that the reason why he could get them loans is because his

business is owned by J .P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan and Lloyds of London,

that as a result, he had access to capital.

In fact, he had no connection to those banks, and he had no ability to get

people financing.

He just charged them advance fees.

and pocketed their money.

After serving a year in prison, the native Kansan seeks a fresh start.

According to Tucker himself, he bounces from one business to the next, managing

a bar and grill, and then selling cars.

But it's in the rapidly growing payday loan industry where he smells real

opportunity.

Payday loans are short -term loans for an amount usually between $100 and $1

,000. And we call them payday loans because they're usually due at the

borrower's next payday, which could be two weeks after the loan is issued.

Most banks stopped making small cash loans to consumers by the late 1990s. So

payday lenders are filling that void.

For people with no place else to turn, many are willing to pay the costly

interest fees.

that payday lenders charge.

They're usually geared at financially distressed consumers.

A lot of these folks are living paycheck to paycheck, and some of them might

also have a special emergency, like a car breakdown or a medical bill,

else like that.

Tucker gets in on the action and rents a storefront outside Kansas City in 1997.

There, he begins operating a payday loan service.

In this podcast, recorded in 2017, Scott Tucker explains how he took a leap of

faith into an emerging industry.

The business model is, are you smart enough to be able to make the decision

on who you will or will not advance money to, and how do you price it? And

was no answers. You had to do it and figure it out.

At first...

Tucker follows the same playbook as many other payday lenders.

Besides charging high interest rates, he makes the most money from customers who

can't pay him back on time and who get roped into taking out a second or even

third loan known as a rollover.

Some people would say, you know, $350.

for borrowing $300, that's not that crazy of a deal, especially for a

person. The problem is the rollover fees, which is that they kind of nudge

they encourage you to extend the loan, then it kind of traps you into the cycle

of debt.

But then Tucker meets Charles Hallinan, a wealthy entrepreneur from

Pennsylvania.

Hallinan, who authorities would dub the godfather of payday loans, makes plans

to tap into markets that no one else touches, the ones where payday lending

tightly regulated or even outlawed.

Many states have state usury laws which limit the amount of interest you can

charge. So the game becomes how do you evade some of these state laws?

He finds an eager protege in Tucker, and together they launch a payday lending

company named National Money Service, or NMS, in 1998.

Tucker agrees to run the business in a Kansas City suburb, while Hallinan

provides the startup fund.

Hallinan invested about half a million dollars with Tucker, a 50 -50 joint

venture, which essentially entitled Charles Hallinan to half the proceeds of

Tucker's payday lending business.

It's at this point that they hatch their scheme to sell loans all across the U

.S., using a bank as their front. This scheme, called Rent -A -Bank, helps them

dodge state laws.

National banks don't have to obey the state's interest rate limitations,

and therefore the payday lender would say that it's the bank that's the

and therefore we can ignore your state's regulations on payday loans.

They forge a partnership with the obscure county bank of Delaware.

Its spokesy name and website belie the fact...

that it has a federal charter.

In exchange for 5 % of their profits, County Bank is willing to lend them its

name and charter.

The bank didn't actually lend any money. The bank didn't put any money at risk.

But what they did do is they allowed these payday lenders to say that they

extending their loans through County Bank.

Around the same time, Tucker begins taking his lending services online.

His new internet platform gives him unfettered access to consumers.

Nathan White.

This was really a pure entrepreneur move.

It was kind of like the Wild Wild West back then on the Internet.

He was on the vanguard of it. I think he came in at the right time in the early

2000s, figured out that you can leverage the Internet to market these loans to a

whole new group of people. That could be an explosively lucrative market.

As part of his operation, Tucker sets up five different companies with names

like 500 Fast Cash, Cash Advance, and United Cash Loans. They

serve as the public face of his lending enterprise.

By 2003, Tucker's making millions of loans each year and generating tens of

millions of dollars.

But when federal regulators begin taking a closer look at County Bank of

Delaware, he decides that the banks become too risky and too costly.

Tucker got tired of paying 5 % of the county bank for nothing, particularly

he started to realize that he may have another option.

Tucker is convinced that he's found the perfect alternative, Native American

tribe.

States and Indian tribes have the same status under federal law.

So a state cannot sue an Indian tribe. A state cannot enforce state law against

an Indian tribe.

They have tribal sovereign immunity.

By partnering with one or more tribes, he can use tribal law to shield himself

from regulators and keep more of the profits for himself.

He would pay them a very small percentage of his revenues in exchange

acting as the figureheads for his lending business.

As Tucker begins to lure one tribe after another into his racket, it seems he'll

exploit whomever he needs to for money.

When you have hopelessness to the level I've seen in Indian country, and then

you have people come in with ideas, kind of like the snake oil salesman, it

makes it worse.

Next on American Greed, Tucker pours a fortune into the race car team of his

dreams. But will life in the public eye be more than he can handle?

There was this interesting dichotomy of like him wanting to hide his business,

but wanting to be famous for racing.

Those two things can't coexist.

Welcome to Miami, Miami, Oklahoma.

It's November 2003.

Payday lending entrepreneur Scott Tucker is on the hunt for a new business

front.

So he strikes a deal with the Miami Indian tribe, making them partners in

multi -million dollar lending enterprise.

He does the same with the neighboring Modoc tribe the following month.

Scott Tucker pitched them the idea that in exchange for using their names, he

would give them 1 % of the revenues.

coming in from the payday loans. And Scott Tucker believed that by doing so,

could create the appearance that the tribes, and not Scott Tucker, was

this operation.

Because the tribes have sovereign immunity to set their own regulations on

reservation lands, Tucker believes that he can use them to evade state laws.

His lending operation, now called CLK Management,

is already doing business illegally in many states across the U .S. For one

thing, Tucker's selling payday loans in places where it's outlawed.

For another, he's charging exorbitant interest rates of 700 to 1 ,000 percent,

well above the legal limits where payday lending is allowed.

At the outset, Tucker offers the Miami and Modoc tribes major roles in his

organization.

But as their partnership moved forward, it becomes clear that the tribes have no

real voice or decision -making power at all.

They were not agreements by which the tribes actually acquired any payday

lending business or put up any money to acquire a payday lending business.

They didn't have to do anything, and he didn't want them to do anything.

All of the actual work is being done at Tucker's headquarters in Overland Park,

Kansas.

He's moved into a bigger building now, where he employs several hundred call

center agents and debt collectors.

To maintain the rules that CLK is tribally owned, his call center reps are

required to lie about the firm's location.

If anybody asked where they were, they were told, say, Miami, Oklahoma, and

were each day given a weather report of what the weather was in Miami, Oklahoma.

So if somebody challenged them...

It's like, are you telling me the truth? Is it really Miami, Oklahoma? They

could say, yeah, well, it's 72 degrees and sunny right now.

Tucker wants an insurance policy in case the Oklahoma tribes back out.

So his lawyers contact a third tribe, the Yuroks in Northern California.

It's the spring of 2004 when Lisa Adams, senior attorney for the Yurok tribe,

receives their call.

She's been vetting business opportunities for the Yuroks.

who are desperate for revenue.

Their main industry, a commercial fishery, collapsed less than two years

after a catastrophic salmon die -off.

You have the perfect storm, really, of collapse of the food chain, then you

the lack of any meaningful development of any kind on the reservation.

Scott Tucker came across initially, we want to help the people.

As Adams recalls, The business that Tucker proposes at first sounds like a

He invites her and the tribe's leaders to his office in Kansas, where he makes

an apparent effort to wow them.

Mr. Tucker flew us out in his Learjet. We landed at the airport, and a car

picked us up and took us to this beautiful building.

All of a sudden, this is real. Look at the successful...

Look at this number of people that he's employed. So this is a big operation.

But Adams says once they get past the razzle -dazzle, including a flashy video

presentation and a barbecue lunch, there's a catch.

What Tucker and his team are pitching them now isn't a bank, but a so -called

lending office on Yurok soil.

Its main function would be to receive incoming mail.

and forward it to Tucker's headquarters in Kansas.

Now all of a sudden, we've got a building with a couple tribal members

envelopes. I'm like, what's up with this?

One of Tucker's lawyers allegedly describes the tribe's role as something

an offshore bank account.

You're using the term offshore bank account. You're talking about a mere

presence and not an actual real functioning business.

Smacks of money laundering.

Tucker promises the Yuroks monthly payments of $12 ,500 if they sign the

The Yuroks fly home.

But the proposal ultimately goes nowhere.

As hard -pressed as the Yuroks are, the tribal council never finalizes the deal,

much to Tucker's dismay.

He was not happy.

Well, I'm offering you all this money.

Why aren't you going to just instantly approve it?

The following year, Scott Tucker finally lands his third tribal partner, the

Santee Sioux of Nebraska.

He's confident that the Native American tribes will provide the cover his

business needs.

And with the tens of millions of dollars that he's making, he can afford an

expensive new hobby, professional sports car racing.

At that point in my life, I actually had the time and I had the resources just

to give it a try.

Money can buy you a lot, and when it comes to sports, sure, you can own an

team, but you're not going to be the one throwing the ball on Sunday.

Racing is different.

It gives you the opportunity to spend your money and be a part of the team.

Tucker launches his very own team and calls it Level 5 Motorsports.

At age 44, he joins the ranks of so -called Gentleman Drivers.

wealthy amateurs that bankroll teams and trains to race competitively.

Endurance car racing is so much more interesting to watch when you know that

any given point, one of those four drivers during a driver change is going

someone that has been on the track for X amount of time as opposed to a pro.

It really brings a human element to the sport.

Like other gentlemen drivers, Tucker's goal is to qualify to race at the most

prestigious events, from 24 hours of Daytona to Le Mans in France.

As owner of Level 5 Motorsports, he spares no expense assembling the best

pit crews, and professional drivers that money can buy.

These cars aren't cheap. You know, a Ferrari could be $240 ,000, half a

a million dollars.

I mean, a set of tires in one season could be $2 ,500 for a set, and then you

times that by 30, and that's $75 ,000 just on tires.

You're constantly spending money for something that you might win the race,

that's all you get. These guys want to be the best, and Scott was one of them.

Next on American Green, Scott Tucker flaunts his turbocharged fortune at the

expense of consumers who are struggling to get by.

They took the entire paycheck and left me down to zero. I think I was so

overwhelmed, I just was giving up.

By the mid -2000s, Scott Tucker leads one of the most profitable outfits in

online consumer loan industry.

The problem is...

He's dodging regulators and ripping off millions of consumers.

Yes, he is giving payday loans, but he was doing something much more

Tucker's thing was just more of a straight -up scam.

They're truly trying to trick the people who are borrowing.

Thank you for calling 500 -5 cash.

Customer service calls recorded by Tucker's company reveal a disturbing

Time after time, consumers fail to understand how the loans work until it's

late. It looks like you have an amount due of $80 since November the 7th. I

borrowed, no, this is the thing, I only borrowed $200 and you guys have already

taken $445 out of my account.

The manner in which Scott Tucker marketed and delivered these loans to

was deliberately designed to confuse consumers.

You're not notifying me? You're just taking all this money out? And when you

could have easily have paid off my loan a long time ago?

You agreed to us debiting the service charge fee. You did not notify us that

wanted to pay in full.

Yes, I did.

The Federal Trade Commission says the online contract that Tucker uses

federal law in several ways.

First, the TILA box, or Truth in Lending Act box.

which requires lenders to disclose exactly how much the loan will cost, is

misleading, according to lead attorney Nikhil Singhvi.

For a $300 loan, which is the most common one, the loan was supposed to

$390. So you would have an APR, you would have a $300 amount financed,

you'd have a $90 finance charge, and you have $390 in total payments.

That's the takeaway that consumers would get.

However, buried in the fine print below is a whole different story.

It says that the loan will be automatically renewed unless the

the company not to do so by the first due date.

In fact, the loan will be automatically renewed for the first four pay dates,

costing an additional $90 in finance charges each time.

At which point you will have paid $360 in finance charges only.

And it comes as a big shock to consumers when they find out that all that money

has gone to finance charges and none of it's gone to repay their loans.

From there, the principal gets repaid in $50 increments while incurring even

more finance charges until the debt is clear.

As far as I knew, frickin' Thursday, the damn loan was going to be paid off. So

I ain't even paid nothing towards them. I've paid you almost $400 and ain't not

a dime gone towards the loan?

Correct, sir.

These are people that are really stuck on hard times.

And to experience alone what they thought was going to cost them $90, but

fact cost them hundreds and hundreds of dollars, it's just devastating for them.

Angela Vanderhoof, a state employee living on a tight budget, is among those

get blindsided.

She takes out a $400 loan from One Click Cash, one of the online lenders under

Tucker's umbrella.

I'd gotten behind on bills. A car payment needed to be made, and so I

something right now.

The contract, it appears, obligates her to pay back a total of $520, which she

agrees to.

She says that One Click Cash withdraws close to that amount from her bank

account over the next two months.

I thought I was getting to the point of being able to pay that off.

But then she experiences a traumatic event that upends her life.

I was assaulted and

severely battered for the most part. The assault was

fairly violent and using of a stun gun.

So I had shattered fingertips and 14 stitches to kind of put me back

and I had to take a leave of absence from work.

Faced with no income for the next month, she calls One Click Cash and asks for

an extension on her next payment.

When I spoke to them, they were very considerate. They were understanding. I

felt pretty confident when I got off the phone that they were going to help me

out.

Four days later, however, one -click cash withdraws everything that's left in

her account, and it also costs her an overdraft fee. She contacts them

immediately. Basically, it was, but you owe the money, so we're going to keep

trying until we get it. I even went so far as to request a supervisor and was

refused and then hung up on.

They make eight more attempts to withdraw money, jacking up her overdraft

By the time she goes back to work and receives her next paycheck, they strike

again. They took the entire paycheck and left me down to zero. I think I was so

overwhelmed, I just was giving up.

Once I was mentally in a better space to kind of assess the damage and came to

realize just how much it had cost me, it was like astronomical by the end

result.

Angela discovers that she's paid them $1 ,300.

More than three times the amount of her original $400 loan.

They've also cost her an additional $200 in bank overdraft fees.

They just kind of turned into piranha and just attacked my account.

Like Angela, approximately 60 % of Tucker's customers fall into the same

automatic loan renewals.

When I started going back to my bank statements,

And started adding up the money. I said, they've been paid more than enough

money by now.

Then you get frustrated. Then you get angry.

And it's very disturbing. Out of a $250 loan, they stole approximately

$1 ,000 from me.

There's no question that caused a lot of consumer harm and put a lot of money in

Scott Tucker's pockets.

This was...

the way they intended the business to run, and it was an important profit

for them.

He robbed from the poor to have a rich lifestyle.

He didn't give a damn about anybody.

Next on American Greed, a relentless prosecutor wages a seven -year battle to

stop Scott Tucker.

If he was a legitimate businessman, why would he have gone to such great pains

to conceal himself?

In Denver, the Colorado Attorney General's office begins investigating

online lending companies operating illegally in the state.

Neither lender, cash advance nor preferred cash loans, is licensed to do

business in Colorado.

In November 2004, Assistant Attorney General Paul Chesson writes cease and

desist letters to the companies.

His only tangible lead... is that both have mailing addresses in Carson City,

Nevada.

Cash Advance did not respond to that letter.

Preferred Cash did. Basically, it was a blow -off. I needed to get some more

information as to who these lenders were.

I needed some flesh and blood behind these names.

Chesson subpoenas both lenders for their corporate records, but neither

complies. So he contacts the Nevada Attorney General's office for help.

What are these addresses, and what can we learn?

Turns out these addresses were mail drops.

The mail drops belonged to two different Nevada firms, CB Service Corp. and

Executive Global Management.

Both share the same officer, James Fontano.

I had thought that Mr. Fontano was the man behind the curtain.

So with that information, I went.

into court and got the contempt citation.

And these companies had to be in court at a date certain, July of 2005.

Two days before the court date, however, Chesson gets thrown for the loop.

He received a call from an attorney claiming that two Native American

the Miami tribe of Oklahoma and the Santee Sioux of Nebraska, are the actual

owners of cash advance and preferred cash loans.

And he said, so we're going to move to dismiss your contempt citation.

You can't touch us. You can't touch the Indian tribes due to something called

tribal sovereign immunity.

It just didn't sound right. How would these tribes have found out about this

proceeding? It just smells.

At the same time, both Nevada firms tied to James Fontanone, CB Service Corp.,

and Executive Global Management deny having anything to do with payday

Chesson demands that the tribes and the Nevada companies produce proof to

support their claims.

But they refuse.

The tribes, not only would they not give us any information, but they said that

we don't have to give you information because we're immune from soup.

Chesson spends the next two years locked in legal battle with them.

Until March 2007, when the elusive James Fontano finally agrees to talk.

Fontano, just released from federal prison for tax fraud, reveals the truth

about cash advance and preferred cash loans.

Mr. Fontano basically said, hey, I am really not the president. I don't have

day -to -day business operations.

I just do what Mr. Tucker tells me to do. Mr. Tucker is actually the one who's

running these lenders.

It's the first that Chesson's ever heard of Scott Tucker.

As Fontana would later testify at trial, Tucker paid him to set up shell

companies with mail drops in Nevada.

It's a service that Fontana provides to hundreds of clients, and it's perfectly

legal in Nevada.

He would testify that all of the mail that went to cash advance and preferred

cash loans was then forwarded to Tucker's office in Kansas.

Fontana is never convicted of any crime in connection with Tucker's scam.

The structure that Tucker set up was really elaborate. He had a front

and then he had a fake CEO for that.

And then he had these payday lending brands on top of that.

The more companies he would set up, the harder it would be for a consumer or for

a regulator to find him.

Armed with this new information, Chesson subpoenas Scott Tucker, who fails to

appear in court for a summons.

So a Denver judge issues a warrant for Tucker's arrest in May 2008.

The warrant is enforceable only in Colorado, giving Tucker ample reason to

away. But he's brazen enough to practically dare authorities to catch

During that time that the state was going after him, he actually bought...

an $8 million house in Aspen, Colorado, and would fly his private jet into

Colorado. And he was racing in Colorado, so he clearly was not concerned.

Instead, Tucker appears more worried about another threat, a lawsuit filed by

the so -called godfather of payday loans, Charles Hallinan.

Hallinan, who launched a 50 -50 joint venture with Tucker 11 years earlier,

claims that his former protege has been cheating him out of his share of the

profits.

Charles Hallinan got wind of the fact that the checks he was getting didn't

actually reflect half of Tucker's entire business. That was obviously a very

problematic lawsuit for Tucker, a lawsuit about who really owned his

with possibilities of discovery.

That's the last thing he wanted when he was in the middle of pretending that

tribes actually owned his business.

So in 2010, Tucker settled out of court with Hallinan for $30 million, but does

not admit any wrongdoing.

While he's ended a lawsuit, he's written emails to Hallinan that will come back

to haunt him in court.

Emails that expose his tribal partnerships as being a total fraud.

Even Tucker, in an unguarded, honest moment, admitted that nothing changed

the business has remained his.

Next on American Greed, a whistleblower makes secret recordings that conceal

Scott Tucker's fate at trial.

But we're laundering money.

It is illegal. That may be true. There is a laundering aspect to it.

Scott Tucker is on a tear.

While the rest of the U .S. economy is struggling in 2010, his payday lending

empire is booming.

Post -2008 was a great time to be in the payday loan business because you had

all these people out of work and desperate for money. That is actually

the golden era for Tucker.

During just the five years from around 2008 to 2012, his businesses pulled in

about $3 .5 billion.

He pulls another fast one on state regulators when he sells his company,

Management, to a tribal entity named AMG Services.

Now, he says, the Native American tribes are the full owners of the operation,

and he's just an employee, but it's all a big charade.

Tucker's Payday Loan Enterprise was pulling in what we estimate about $20

million a month, and yet...

Tucker sold his business to the tribes for $120 ,000.

It was a sham merger.

In fact, no money exchanged hands at the time or for even years later.

Tucker's out flagging his competition on the racetrack as well, as he and his

team, Level 5, continue beefing up their fleet.

They clinch one trophy after the next at races around the world.

People were aware that, you know, he was spending a little more money than...

Your average team, that's kind of what kind of kicked teams out of the series.

mean, you run out of money. You run out of money quickly.

And Scott's team didn't have that problem.

But above everything else that year, Tucker scores his biggest coup of all in

the courtroom.

Paul Chesson and the Colorado Attorney General's office are fighting for access

to the Miami and Santee Sioux Tribe's business records.

The tribes argue that they're shielded by sovereign immunity.

The battle goes all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court in November 2010,

where the court decides in favor of the tribes.

That basically stopped our investigation until our case came to an ignominious

end. As the tribes would later admit to federal authorities, they submitted

false information to the courts.

They won.

By lying to the court about who they were.

They said it's us, we're the ones making the payday loans, we're in charge of

it. You know, it was working. The whole thing was working.

Nevertheless, Tucker's victory proves fleeting.

Because the feds are getting ready to drop a hammer on him.

What Colorado did, it laid the groundwork for the federal agencies to

ball and run with it.

In April 2012, the Federal Trade Commission launches a civil suit against

and his enterprise and requests a court -ordered freeze on his lending services.

Our main concern here was that the loans were deceptive. The loan document was

deceptive. It was harming consumers in astronomical numbers.

Undaunted, Tucker vows to fight the FTC.

But other people tangled up in his web are alarmed.

One of them is a paralegal that works for the Miami tribe.

She believes that Tucker's using the tribe to launder money and putting them

legal jeopardy.

Her name is Carolyn Williams, and she begins secretly recording her

conversations with her boss, Don Brady, who runs the tribe's business arm.

He's also been implicated in the FTC suit.

We open those accounts in our name and then we hold his money to keep him from

paying taxes on it. But that money is owed to him. It's his money.

But we're laundering money.

Well, that may be true. That may be true. There is a laundering aspect to

Okay. But the business model is what it is. What these recordings did was they

showed that it wasn't just Tucker who knew that this tribal relationship was

sham.

Everybody knew.

100 % ownership, wholly owned.

None of that's true. Every declaration that you signed, that the chief signed,

none of it's true.

Well, I'm telling you, how do you sleep at night knowing this stuff?

I sleep just fine, honey.

Williams' protests go unheeded. But her recordings will be introduced at trial.

Because by 2014...

Federal investigators are mounting a criminal case and tribal sovereignty

protect anyone this time.

There was kind of nowhere to hide at that point.

When American Green returns, Scott Tucker is losing control and bracing for

impact. When the government has the eye on you and they snare you, you're not

getting out.

After amassing a payday lending empire worth billions, by February 2016,

Scott Tucker is facing the end of his reign.

Federal agents arrest him at his home outside Kansas City and charge him with

counts of racketeering, fraud, and money laundering.

The U .S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York is

the case.

to prosecute mafia loan sharks.

There is a part of the racketeering laws which prohibits anyone from operating a

business that extends loans at more than twice the rates allowed under state

law. The fact that there was a federal statute gave us an opportunity to

investigate what he was doing.

He's also able to subpoena the Native American tribes tied to Tucker because

federal law takes precedence over tribal sovereign immunity.

Tucker, who's been hiding behind one business front after another for more

15 years, is completely exposed now.

If you look at his career in the 90s through 2012, it's obviously at the

level just the willingness to lie to get people's money.

Besides being under criminal indictment, he's fighting a civil lawsuit filed by

the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC's goal is to recover the money that Tucker allegedly swindled from

consumers.

The government claims that from 2008 to 2012, he built more than $1 billion out

of 4 .5 million customers.

We had every transaction, and we were able to calculate with absolute

how many consumers paid more than they were told they were going to pay and

exactly how much they paid.

And that was the $1 .3 billion number.

In September 2016,

Tucker suffers a massive defeat.

A federal judge ordering race car driver Scott Tucker and several consumer

lending companies he manages to pay nearly $1 .3 billion to the FTC.

The $1 .3 billion was the highest litigated recovery in FTC history.

One year later, his criminal case goes to trial, and a federal jury finds him

guilty on all 14 counts of racketeering, fraud, and money laundering.

I would have never, ever imagined anything like this.

Tucker seems unrepentant to the very end. He records this interview for a

podcast series called Prison Professors in December 2017 while he's under house

arrest and awaiting sentencing.

If you're super successful and there's a lot of money involved, there's a good

chance you're going to turn off some of the jurors. No doubt about it.

I'm not a psychologist, but my guess is that many criminals and sociopaths

rationalize their behavior.

Tucker's no different.

He's sentenced to 16 years and eight months in federal prison.

Tucker declined repeated requests to be interviewed by American Greed. He is

currently appealing his case.

The Miami tribe, the Murdoch tribe, and the Santee Sioux are not charged and

enter non -prosecution agreements with the government.

They admit their part in Tucker's scheme and forfeit the money he stashed in

their accounts.

They also declined to be interviewed by American Greed.

Tucker's mentor, Charles Hallinan, is serving 14 years in federal prison for a

separate payday lending scheme.

In September 2018, the FTC begins sending refund checks to more than one

consumers harmed by Tucker's predatory loans.

The government's recovered and repaid a total of $505 million so far.

What this guy was doing was he was going after people who had to...

turned to the internet to borrow $300 to get through the week.

And he was stealing their money.

It must be nice, you know, to be able to live that lavish life and be able to go

through those things when realistically I was struggling from day to day.

And what they took from me was just supplying him even more to do these

things that anyone else would ever dream of doing.

Right is right and wrong is wrong. And how dare he?

But I will say this.

What goes around comes around.

And karma is what it is.

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