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Brennan Reopens Payday Loan Stores in SF, RC, to Challenge 36% Rate Cap?

Chuck Brennan is back to loan-shark in South Dakota again! After telling our fair state to kiss off, he has reopened two payday lending stores, in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, to peddle one-week “signature loans” for $250, $500, $750, or $1,000. Brennan’s Dollar Loan Center website offers this disclosure explaining the fees:

…Signature loan charges are based on a one week loan. The APR is [36.00%]. The actual APR on your loan may be higher or lower, depending on the amount you borrow. These calculations are based on an example of a one week loan. In a $500 loan scenario, the customer has a one time payment 7 days from the loan date. The amount of the finance charge is $3.45. Please note, the aforementioned finance charge is the total amount of interest that would be paid if the loan is kept out for the full one week term. Loans may be repaid early without penalty. Loan approval and loan terms are based on the lender’s underwriting standards and a review of the applicants’ creditworthiness. Applicants must provide proof of employment or reliable income and valid state issued I.D. Certain Limitations may apply. Late fees will be assessed if loan is not paid back within the one week term… [Dollar Loan Center, “South Dakota Signature Loans,” retrieved 2017.07.07].

Actually, Chuck, under SDCL 54-4-44, the actual APR cannot be higher than 36% depending on the amount the customer borrows. The 36% rate cap we voters merrily passed last year is pretty firm:

…no licensee may contract for or receive finance charges pursuant to a loan in excess of an annual rate of thirty-six percent, including all charges for any ancillary product or service and any other charge or fee incident to the extension of credit [SDCL 54-4-44].

That statute also seems to make clear that you can’t charge a late fee (a “charge of fee incident to the extension of credit”) on top of that 36% APR. I don’t think Chuck is setting up a financial service; he’s setting up a challenge to South Dakota law.

8 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2017-07-07 11:58

    He appears to be wasting pesos this way. He should be legally bribing (you know campaign contributions- bribes, whatever) pols to change the law for him. Works admirably for the koch bros.

  2. Porter Lansing 2017-07-07 12:17

    I say he’s probably involved in some con job and needs an invented tax write off. His primary occupation is employing strong armed, knee breaking debt collectors in Las Vegas. Along with wife Mary, Charles Brennan is the cofounder of Clark County Collection Service LLC. He resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.
    http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/clark-county-collection-service-llc/las-vegas-nevada-89148/clark-county-collection-service-llc-trying-to-ripoff-money-on-the-name-of-collection-las-1330817

  3. CLCJM 2017-07-08 19:17

    The proverbial bad penny has returned! His greed knows no bounds! Or does he himself have some bad debts out there that he desperately needs money for?

  4. jerry 2017-07-08 19:47

    The Dollar Loan in Rapid City never closed its doors.

  5. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-07-09 08:28

    Really? Jerry, were they just servicing old loans, or were they offering any new products in the interim?

  6. jerry 2017-07-09 09:15

    Who knows, but the place never closed. There are a lot of empty store fronts where there used to be pay day loan graft, but the big one on LaCrosse Street stayed open and looks like it still is doing business. You know there is a lot of military in and around Rapid City, and when you have a lot of military, you have what goes with it. From territory days to current, poor wages and part time work with high housing and utilities make it interesting. When the hospital and the credit collections are one in the same, ya better watch out. 36% vig on a short term loan will still make you a healthy return of money without much capital risk.

    Pay Day loans are not such a bad thing, it is the highway robbery of high interest rates and the trap they set that can be devastating for the working poor. There is a gap between Medicaid and ACA/Obamacare thanks to Daugaard and his cult legislature. In that gap fall many people with health issues that must pay for the services they receive out of their own threadbare pockets.

  7. Roger Cornelius 2017-07-09 09:56

    Jerry is right, the Dollar Loan Center in Rapid City never closed and were simply servicing old debt.
    I also have it first hand they have been offering settlement packages to those that have old debt. Pay down the principal with no interest or late fees.
    That sounds too generous for Chuck, but maybe he does just needs the cash and it is costing him too much to service the old debt.

  8. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-07-10 06:52

    Interesting—the Rapid City stores should already have found a way to make 36% work, since federal law caped interest rates on loans to service members at 36% for years before we passed IM 21.

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