Original subtitles

[Scott Tucker] When you're racing, it is like being in a fight.

[engine revving]

You're in a fight with a guided missile.

The feeling of controlling something that could kill you.

When you get it right, it's a very rewarding feeling.

When you get it wrong, it could be fatal.

[theme song playing]

[grunting]

[Tim Muir] Barney, you're on speaker. This is Tim.

[indistinct chatter]

Listen, there is no attempt or thought to scare anybody away.

We know this process is happening. We cannot stop it.

That's not the intent.

[indistinct chatter]

[Scott] These are my prized possessions.

They're coming and ripping them out of my museum at my house.

It's not something that I really want to watch or partake in.

I think most people would understand.

Prized possessions getting yanked from your house.

You sit there, want to be part of it and watch it?

No.

I mean, it's fucking over.

Why would I look out the window and make it more miserable for myself?

If I thought it was going to take this long to get 'em out of here,

I would've been gone. I would've left.

People just don't understand it's scary, until it happens to them.

Five years ago, Kim and I would have never thought about this.

We have an army of attorneys.

And said, "That would never happen.

That would never happen. I've never seen that."

And here we are.

[Kim Tucker] It's heartbreaking to him because those are his babies.

I'd never buy anything the government seized and sold.

I wouldn't.

I don't want to be a part of the process of the destruction of somebody's life.

I don't care whether whatever they did they were guilty of or not guilty of.

I just wouldn't go there.

To see them come and take those for something,

and to know that they can take every penny you have,

for a number in a box.

That's all it was, a number in a box.

[David Heath] I still think of him as just this guy in Kansas City

who cooked up this scheme that probably went way beyond anything

he had ever imagined.

The Scott Tucker payday lending business was illegal, from top to bottom.

[Iona Gorecki] Scott Tucker walked away with over $400 million.

Money taken from struggling consumers.

[Ed Zabinski] This characterization of him as the evil godfather

of the payday loan industry,

racing cars on the backs of the poor and underprivileged, is complete BS.

[operator] Okay, I see you have a due date on November 9th.

Minimum amount due, $155, total due, $455.

How can I assist you today?

There are millions who are victims of this predatory lending.

[consumer] There have been at least four payments made on this account.

I'm trying to figure out why the balance is $455.

[Muir] It's not a criminal scheme, it's not a criminal enterprise.

It's people trying to build a business.

[operator] Each time the loan is not paid in full, you incur a new service charge.

[consumer] That was not explained to me.

[Chris Peterson] Scott Tucker was charging two or three times the interest rates

that the New York City Mafia loan sharking syndicates charged.

[Muir] Every single businessperson in the country

should be petrified by what happened.

They're systematically taking apart his life, piece by piece.

[Paul Chessin] If you want to push the envelope,

you got to be willing to pay the consequences.

[Muir] It is a criminal indictment and we're facing a life sentence.

Think about being buried alive. Because that's what it feels like.

[Walter Archer] I started truck driving in 2005.

It's decent money.

I'm not out here to get rich.

Um, if I was, I'm in the wrong profession.

I'm just interested in doing something that I enjoy

and being able to support my family.

I have four kids.

Dakota's twelve, Austin is nine, Emily is seven and Reesa is six.

At the time, I was working in the gas and oil field

and it was a slow period.

I could see that I was going to be falling behind in bills.

I did not have a savings to fall back on.

I had seen Montel Williams' advertisement.

Montel here, for Money Mutual.

It's my guess you don't want any services shut off.

The answer, Money Mutual.

I was looking to borrow $500.

So I filled out the online forms

for what I thought was going to be a short-term loan.

When I took the $500, I was expecting to pay back $650.

I knew $150 was a little on the high scale,

but I wasn't too worried about paying it back.

It was a relief to get the money. I knew I could get everything paid.

The kids, you know, they'd still have heat.

I knew that they wouldn't be cold during the winter.

Every payday, they started taking out their payments of $75,

and I never argued 'cause I was expecting it.

The alarm bells started going off

when I received a notice from the bank that I was overdrawn.

And when I started investigating, I discovered that OneClickCash

had tried to take $950 out of my account without my authorization.

I told them they had already received several payments of $75,

and it was then they started telling me,

"No, those weren't payments towards repaying the loan.

Those were loan renewal fees,"

which was something that I knew nothing about until that phone call.

Apparently, if I don't get the loan paid in full,

they charge me $75 to roll the loan over and renew it.

Those loan fees they were taking out of my account,

I thought were payments.

In polite terms,

they were trying to screw me over every way they could.

In the crudest terms,

they were trying to fuck me up the ass without Vaseline.

[footsteps approaching]

[grunting]

[man] Loan sharks, they got half the guys at the plant on the hook.

Get behind on the interest payments and this is what happens.

All you guys have jobs. What do you go to those fellas for?

Some of us get in the hole gambling, some guys got bills to pay.

A lot of reasons, Joe.

Why don't you go to banks or legal loan companies?

They want collateral, credit references. We're bum risk for legit outfits.

Borrowing and lending money has been around for a long time,

and it's always been a dicey endeavor, hasn't it?

[Chessin] Banks got out of the business of making small, low-cost consumer loans.

Consumers needed small loans

and that's where the payday lending industry developed.

[Peterson] The industry grew like wildfire.

Before you know it, thousands and then tens of thousands

of payday lending storefront shops crept up all across the country.

In a lot of states, payday loans are perfectly legal

provided you have the right license.

But there were some states that didn't allow it.

Once the Internet came around, the lenders that wanted to do business

in New York or other states where payday loans were illegal,

simply just started offering them over the Internet.

[Heath] Just the online part of payday lending

was like a $10-billion-a-year business.

There's a whole industry built around poor people.

[Peterson] The old-fashioned Mafia loan sharks had been put out of business

by the payday lending industry.

The average interest rate on payday loans all across the country

is about 450%, maybe 500%.

Though they seem like they're small loans,

they can become pernicious in that they're a debt trap.

[Gorecki] You're targeting the most vulnerable consumers out there.

It's the people usually on their last dollar.

Unfortunately, those people are usually the most vulnerable to financial scams.

[Peterson] We can't have people tearing down the freeway at 200 miles an hour

because it's dangerous. Things are gonna break.

The same thing can happen in people's lives

when they borrow at exceptionally high interest rates.

[Zabinski] If you were barely making ends meet and the brakes go out on your car,

simple thing that happens to everybody, it's 500 bucks.

You don't have 500 bucks, so now what do you do?

Payday loans are widely considered unsavory

by a large measure of the population that will never need one.

[reporter 1] Payday loan mogul and race car driver Scott Tucker

is well known on the racing circuit

but his latest title is defendant in a federal indictment.

[reporter 2] The feds say Tucker personally gained

hundreds of millions of dollars,

which he used to fund his racing team and that he lives a lavish lifestyle.

Tucker's attorney, Timothy Muir, left federal court

and sped off in a black pickup.

Muir's in trouble because the feds say he helped Tucker avoid federal laws

by setting up some of Tucker's payday loan businesses

to look like they were owned by Indian tribes.

[Kim] Never in a million years did you think what you were doing was a crime.

And that you'd be arrested and the FBI would come and bang on your door

in front of your kids and haul you out in handcuffs.

I mean...

It's like a dream, a nightmare.

"Is this happening? Wake me up."

-You can't roll up in a ball, and... -No.

-And go into the fetal position... -Sure.

-Because it'd terrify your children... -Right.

...and you just kind of have to...

You gotta fight.

-Yeah, sure. -Fight, flight or freeze. Right?

Freeze, you're fucked.

Flight, you're fucked.

Fight, your only chance.

It's a fight. It's a fight to the death. That's what they want.

The federal life sentence is a death sentence.

You just don't get the humanity of actually getting a needle in your arm.

You spend the rest of your fucking life,

23 hours a day, and maybe one hour a day you get the sun.

That's a death sentence.

[Scott] If we'd been out robbing banks, and we got caught,

that'd have been an easy decision. "Okay, you caught me."

All of this hubbub over some short-term loans over the Internet?

Really?

Really? [scoffs]

[announcer] Back at Road Atlanta, we have a green flag

at race four of the Ferrari Challenge.

Right away, Scott Tucker in that black and red number 55

takes the lead over pole-sitter Zak Brown.

There you see some sliding from race leader Scott Tucker.

How was it on the track?

You know, it's not too bad.

It's a little dirtier, but overall, grip pretty good.

Standing here with Norma Tucker, Scott's mom, and my mother.

I want your impressions and thoughts

after Scott's second straight SCCA championship.

I am so happy. I am the happiest mother in the whole...

probably, United States right now.

Have you enjoyed having your friends here?

'Cause you got a lot of support this weekend.

Great. Yeah. It's like a home track for us.

Yeah, it's great. Right, Jia?

-And this young lady here. -Yeah?

Um...

-Have you had a good day watching Daddy? -Yes.

-You're impressed? -Look at the camera.

Yeah.

[all cheering]

[Heath] It at some point dawned on me there was this guy out there,

who was doing everything he could possibly do

to become a sports celebrity.

But he had this secret world where he had this business that nobody knew about.

Nobody knew he was associated with it. It was hidden...

A shell company within a shell company within a tribe

and he had somehow managed for years and years and years to get by undetected.

There was a woman in Colorado, who, in late 2004,

had taken out over $500 in loans from two payday lenders,

and she figured out

that they weren't really registered to make loans in Colorado.

So she complained to the Attorney General.

And the Attorney General sent a really routine letter to the address on the loan,

and the address was this strip mall in Carson City, Nevada.

I enlisted the help of the Nevada Attorney General

and said, "What are these PO boxes?"

And so we found out that the president officer of both companies

was an individual by the name of James Fontano.

At the height of our business

we were managers, directors or officers for about 785 companies.

A lot of them we didn't really know because we were contacted by attorneys

who did not always give us the exact nature of the business,

just that they needed a certain level of protection and anonymity,

and so that's what we would provide.

[Chessin] We went back to court with this information.

We said we wanted contempt citations

and contempt proceedings brought against Mr. Fontano.

A month later, there's this document filed from these two Indian tribes.

They say, "Oh, nobody in Carson City owns these payday lenders. We own them."

[Chessin] One tribe said, "We are Cash Advance,"

and then a different tribe said, "We are Preferred Cash."

And you can't touch us because we're Indian tribes.

Prior to then, we had no indication whatsoever

that Indian tribes were involved.

[Heath] I went to Oklahoma to meet and talk to this Indian tribe.

To figure out, you know, "What's going on here?"

It was totally a rural area.

There was, essentially, weeds and a building.

I walked into the office that was supposed to be this huge payday lending operation.

It was totally dead. There was nobody in there.

It was a receptionist and maybe a guy.

They were very friendly to me and I explained

I was there to talk about the payday lending business.

They'd have somebody get back to me. Nobody ever did.

I thought, "There is something really wrong here,

and I just want to know who's actually running this business

and why are they lying about it?"

[Peterson] Indian tribes have something called sovereign immunity,

which is just to say that the state government can't sue that Indian tribe.

So a state government doesn't have the right to bring

an Indian tribal government into court.

The federal government can, but state governments can't.

The loans were still illegal. It's just that, for a technical reason,

the sovereign immunity doctrine

doesn't allow state governments to actually enforce their law.

[Heath] Somebody had come up with a way

of having a payday lending business that wasn't subject to state law.

[Scott] I didn't have anybody to fall back on.

No rich parents, no big company, no safety net.

So I just had to rely on myself, make my own breaks.

So no matter what, at the end of the day, it's up to you.

Nobody else.

There was no newsletter that came out and said,

"Hey, this is a great business." Nothing like that.

We saw an opportunity and my brother Blaine and I

decided we'd give it a try.

This is where we started it.

A small office, down in the basement, in a flood zone.

When you come and see this and then look at the space

where we were almost 20 years later,

with 1,600 employees, it kinda tells a story.

There was a lot of risk because a lot of it was unknown.

No road maps.

We had a trade name, called Mister Money.

And we liked to use the word "fast cash,"

because it described what the product was and people understood it.

[Muir] These type of loans were advertised by Yellow Pages

or classified ads or radio spots.

Scott took it online.

[Scott] It didn't really take off in the beginning.

It was stable, but we weren't setting any records, by any means.

One of the paradigm shifts in the business

was being able to adapt it to the Internet.

I was more involved in the technology and marketing side of it.

Blaine, he did more of the human resource, management, employee things like that.

He played a pivotal role in the growth and, you know, I was lucky to have him.

[Muir] When it was operating at its peak, there was over 1,200 employees.

Even with 1,200 people, it was a family. And that's really what Blaine did.

Blaine knew all 1,200 and they all knew him.

At its zenith, it would have hit a billion dollars in annual revenue.

[Anita Finney] It was the most loving, energetic family that just grew.

It was exciting to hear people on the phone...

You walk up and down the aisles and hear people happy to do their job.

Caring for each other.

It was the best place that I have ever been in my life.

[Scott] I mean, I loved what we did.

Most people will say that's bullshit, but we did a good job at it.

If you would call one of the millions of customers and say,

"Why did you come back and use this product and service?"

And they said, "Because it was fast, simple and easy,

and the company did exactly what they said they would."

It doesn't get much better.

You know, the old saying.

Well, it's not, "Careful what you wish for." That's one.

"No good deed goes unpunished."

[indistinct chatter]

[Archer] OneClickCash kept calling me.

Their attitude was, "You owe us money,

and we're going to do anything and everything we have to do to make you pay."

It was infuriating. I was trying to reason with them.

I wasn't trying to get out of paying the loan.

I borrowed the money, I rightfully owe it back.

But, at the same time, I was not willing to be taken advantage of

and borrow $500 and end up paying $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 back.

I wasn't going to do it.

Because why?

When I told them not to call back, federal communication rules state

if I tell you to stop calling me, you have to stop.

It was at that point they said,

"We're with the Indian tribe. We can do what we want."

I don't care if you're an Indian tribe or not.

I don't care if you're Mexican, American, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish.

Martian.

You need to abide by the laws

regardless as to whether you are a nation within a nation,

you're still in the United States and you should follow United States law.

[Chief Bill Follis] I'll tell you a story.

I was sitting at home one night, phone rang and it's this lady.

My dad borrowed $300 or something like that...

Blah, blah, blah.

And he's getting charged this interest rate.

And I says, "Just a minute."

I says, "How did you get my name?"

She said, "I called the police department and asked who is chief of the Modocs."

[chuckling] And got my number.

I didn't like it very well and I told Scott about it.

We were shipped here in the 1800s as prisoners of war.

In fact, 1873, if you wanna get the dates right.

Oklahoma was a deposit area for the tribes.

From the east to the west.

I'm the only Northwest tribe.

Not only did they take our land,

but our resources and all for big business.

We lost our language. We lost our culture.

The accountability has never been established

in the United States government as far as I'm concerned.

The representative from Kansas that I knew contacted me, said,

"I have a person that wants to talk to you about the loan business."

And I didn't know Scott, but he vouched for Scott.

So that's good enough for me.

It was his idea and he conveyed it to us and we accepted.

It's just that simple.

Idea was we use our sovereignty, we set it up, we get so much money

and that satisfied me.

It was a business deal and it was a very successful business deal.

I guess my confidence in Scott Tucker made it work.

Hi, how are you?

I can say this, it was just right up there with gaming.

In profitability, gaming's here,

loan business is here, instead of down here.

Hi, Sheriff.

Okay.

We've deposited all our money in the banks here

and then it goes in funds.

We buy land, we help people with their home improvements.

Our money goes right back to the people. It's the people's money.

It's not my money, it's the tribal people's money.

We loan to people.

Sure, it's high interest rate. A lot of people doesn't like that.

But these are people that could not get money anywhere else.

Like I say, we operated legally.

We have not done anything illegal, but we've been accused of it.

[Gorecki] Scott Tucker ran AMG Services, undoubtedly.

He was the one who brought the business to the tribes in proposals.

He was the one who built up the company.

AMG's loan portfolios represented

the highest volume payday lending operation in the United States.

They used loan documents and disclosures that didn't seem to reflect

what they were actually asking consumers to pay back.

So after the tribal jurisdiction issue was resolved,

the next step was showing that

the loan documents were actually deceptive.

A lot of the consumer victims we talked to were struggling individuals.

They were living, usually, paycheck to paycheck.

And a lot of times, in between paychecks

they would find themselves short maybe $200, $300.

And so, many of them would go online and they'd do a search.

They'd search for a payday loan.

They would fill out the loan application.

At the end, they were asked to check four boxes

indicating they understood all of the loan terms.

Each of those four boxes corresponded to various hyperlinked documents

they were supposed to have read.

The loan document that sets out the terms of the loan has a box.

We call it the TILA box.

It laid out how much money you were taking out.

So, let's take $300, for example, which was the most common loan.

That would be the amount you're borrowing.

It would lay out a finance charge. For $300, usually $90.

And it would tell you the total of payments, $390.

Then you'd accept the loan.

The reality was very different, though.

After two weeks, on the payday,

the consumer would see $90 come out of their account.

And then in another two weeks, they'd see another $90 come out.

In another two weeks, another $90.

At that point, they've paid off $360.

And they figure, $30 more to $390.

On the next pay period, they'd see $140 come out.

At which point, the consumer becomes tipped off

that something's wrong, not right. And they call in.

And during that call, they would be told that

because they didn't act to pay the loan off

in full on their first pay period,

something that they had to proactively do,

the loan simply got renewed every two weeks, every two weeks, over and over,

and none of the $360 that they had already paid

was applied to their principal at all.

If this process were to continue to its resolution,

the way it was structured to do,

$300 would end up costing consumers $975 in total.

You can hear the dismay in their voice

when they realize they've paid all this money

and all of it has been in finance charges. The principal is still there, untouched.

[Nikhil Singhvi] The money bag document was one of several smoking guns

showing the employees knew consumers were confused.

That they were ripping consumers off.

[Gorecki] What it showed was

AMG employees and managers knew how the loan worked.

They just weren't willing to tell consumers that.

We asked some consumers to send us their loan documents,

to see what they said.

And it became very clear to us,

just from a very brief reading of the document,

that a reasonable consumer would have absolutely no idea how this loan worked.

The language is confusing.

It's full of sentences that are interrupted

by other information that's unrelated and not relevant to the loan terms.

In court, AMG challenged our determination this was deceptive.

And, actually, in one of their filings,

their attorneys pulled out specific sentences from the fine print...

and sort of set 'em up one after another, and then told the judge,

"Look, judge, it's very clear. The loan was clearly explained.

Here are all the ways that we disclosed to consumers how it worked."

A reasonable consumer wouldn't understand this language

and a reasonable consumer shouldn't need an attorney

standing there right next to them,

pointing the different places and the order of the sentences

to help them understand how the loan works.

[Scott] We didn't think the loan note was confusing.

It was a standard industry practice.

It'd been in the business for, you know, probably ten years.

Customers knew the process, the renewal.

If they didn't pay off, they would incur more finance charges.

The FTC loved to talk about fine print

and conveniently ignore all of the other communications

that the lenders took to inform the consumers,

"Here's what's gonna happen," and the consumers knew it.

There were multiple e-mails,

confirmation e-mails, payment reminder e-mails,

explanation e-mails, that went to the consumers that explained,

"If you did nothing, if you did not take any action,

this loan would be renewed,

and you would not make any payment towards principal.

It would only pay your finance charge, and we would renew it."

And that model has been used in the industry for...

[stutters] as long as I can remember.

What he's saying is that model,

that was an industry standard model used by over a hundred different lenders.

Sure, no, I can give you some examples on how that would work.

When I started working there, things started to take off for them.

It turned into a big machine.

It went from a tight-knit family thing to a full-on corporate atmosphere.

We do that four times, starting...

[former employee] Scott and Blaine kept to themselves.

Eagles fly with eagles,

so all the top brass, they would be amongst themselves.

I was always told that everything that we were doing was legal. [chuckles]

People need payday loans to get by, so maybe I justified it that way.

It was toxic, at times.

[Ivan Valdivia] All they said was...

"Our company's owned by an Indian tribe in Oklahoma.

And if anybody calls and asks you where you are, where you're located,

you're located here in Miami, Oklahoma."

That was in training in day one.

You couldn't use your cell phone in the building.

You'd have to use your cell phone in the parking lot.

Now, looking back,

they didn't want to have pictures of their facility taken at all,

'cause we weren't supposed to be in Kansas.

I didn't think we were doing anything wrong.

I didn't think they were trying to hide anything, but obviously they were.

AMG Services tried very hard to make it look

like they were a tribally run business.

Really, nothing was happening on tribal land.

It was all done in Overland Park, Kansas.

The three tribes that they were working with

were in Oklahoma and Nebraska.

And so when consumers called in to talk about their loans,

representatives were told to pretend that they were in Oklahoma or Nebraska.

As a way of making small talk with consumers,

the managers would e-mail around a daily weather report for the two states

because they said,

"Let's make sure you have the right weather to talk about."

I mean, that was an operational decision made by a manager.

And there was only one of them that did that.

And we're not really familiar with how many people they said that to,

what the protocol on that was,

but it was something that we weren't aware of.

They weren't my employees.

The employees that work for me work on the software program

and the platform.

But they were all employed, for the most part,

by one or more of the tribes.

They worked for the tribes themselves.

It was their business, their power and their control.

[Singhvi] We had so much other evidence that

this appearance of a tribal operation was a façade.

[Gorecki] Carolyn Williams used to be an employee

of one of the tribes, the Miami tribe.

She worked for Don Brady, who, on paper, was listed as CEO of AMG Services.

In reality, he really didn't do much at all.

Carolyn became increasingly uncomfortable

with the types of things they were talking about

and so she began to make a few recordings of her conversations with Don Brady.

[Gorecki] Her recordings and testimony were key in showing

that, really, Scott Tucker was the one who was in charge.

He was the one running the show. Really, he was the key person,

the key actor in this entire business operation.

[Singhvi] Employees were quizzed on the top management of the company,

and the correct answers were Scott Tucker and Blaine Tucker.

Norma Tucker, their mother, shows up on the payroll.

Kim Tucker was also on the payroll, but her involvement in our case

was basically as the beneficiary of $19 million in cash

that Scott Tucker basically bundled from the tribal accounts

and sent over to her.

[Gorecki] In fact, the tribes were deriving

only 1% of gross collected revenue from these companies.

99% of those revenues were going to Scott Tucker and his companies.

The tribal accounts were practically his piggy bank.

[Zabinski] I got a call from one of Scott's assistants, who said,

"Hey, my boss wants to go race cars.

He's ordered a car and he's looking for a coach."

And I said, "How much experience does your boss have?"

They said, "He doesn't have any experience."

You look at it on the surface, you've never driven a race car,

you're gonna go buy a $300,000 car with 500 horsepower

and go figure it out.

And he wasn't a natural.

I love Scott, but he's not burdened

with a great deal of natural ability when it comes to driving race cars.

He had to work harder, I think, than anybody else.

And now he's a fantastic driver. Really, really a top driver.

Most guys that are determined to race the Ferrari Challenge

have enough funding that it's not a big deal for them

to afford to go racing, 'cause it's an expensive endeavor,

as you might imagine.

I honestly don't know how many full-time employees there were.

But I know it was an army of humanity.

And we were unstoppable.

[all cheering]

Nobody on our team gave a shit how Scott made his money.

We didn't really care.

He's a really shy guy.

He didn't do any of this to get any attention.

As we started to move up in the sport, and get to where we were racing

on television and more in the public eye, it was a vulnerability for him.

For endurance racing, he was in fact a celebrity.

He was very conscious of his image.

He had a reporter who followed him around

and asked him questions and posted the videos on YouTube.

Is it difficult to adjust when that happens?

You gotta get a couple laps in you to... Yeah, you get acclimated to it.

[Heath] That was some employee of his who was doing it

and acting as a reporter.

He had a documentary made,

and then he had a glowing profile done on him in the Wall Street Journal.

It was really weird.

Given his background, given what he did for a living,

it struck me as very odd that he would want to become a celebrity.

[Zabinski] He is only guilty of being smart or...

Actually, you know what? He's also guilty of being clever.

And clever pisses people off.

He attributes the whole idea of the Indian gaming thing

to something that I taught him, which is "race the rulebook."

If I'm racing in a series,

and there's a rulebook that's this thick for guys with white drivers

and there's a rulebook that's thick for guys with Native American drivers,

I'm gonna start hiring Native American drivers, man.

Because this is the way to go. It's easier. It'll be simpler.

[tires screeching]

I don't think he was trying to hide anything from the government.

I think he was just racing.

[Gorecki] The payday lending business

was an incredibly profitable business for Scott Tucker.

He made at least $400 million from this business.

A lot of which was routed to his racing business,

to his shell corporations,

to buying expensive vehicles like Ferraris and Porsches,

to the $8 million Aspen house that he bought for himself and his wife.

He also had a private jet,

so lots of money on jet travel, vacations, you name it.

All of this was funded with consumer funds, consumer money.

[Singhvi] This happened to 1.5 million people

and it caused $1.3 billion dollars in damage.

Those are astronomical numbers,

but they cause you to lose perspective sometimes.

That those are 1.5 million individual stories

of people who were living paycheck to paycheck.

They were struggling.

[Gorecki] It wasn't just about enforcing the law, which we always want to do,

but it was getting justice for these consumers

and getting refunds for them.

It's hard to read through so many complaints

and listen to so many consumer calls,

and not be moved by the misery and the hardship

these companies imposed on consumers.

[operator] How can I help you today?

[consumer] I owed $500 in October

and my balance is $650,

and they've been taking money out of my account.

[operators and consumers speaking indistinctly]

[Gorecki] The court agreed with our 1.3 billion calculation

and awarded that.

I believe the $1.3 billion

was the largest litigated judgment that the FTC has ever obtained.

[Peterson] The Federal Trade Commission won a very large judgment,

over a billion dollars.

That strikes me as an appropriate measure of the amount of harm

associated with the illegal practices in these lending transactions.

[Scott] Does it piss me off? Fuck, yeah, it pisses me off.

Fucking take it. I don't give a fuck about it.

I could give two... fuck it. Two... fuck it.

Sure, give it to 'em.

Okay with that.

Hey, we'll do that. Fucking take it.

I don't give a fuck about that thing.

[Heath] It was clear that the business was crashing down,

and they would have to pay back all this money.

And then Blaine Tucker was found in a car in a shopping mall,

I think in Kansas City or Overland Park, and apparently he'd killed himself.

[Zabinski] Blaine's gone. He doesn't exist anymore.

I loved Blaine. I thought he was a terrific guy.

I blame the government for that.

In a very real sense, the actions of the government have caused a death.

In my view, they've killed somebody.

[Scott] Blaine was... You know, this was devastating to him.

All of this.

We were proud of what we built,

and we thought we did the best we could, the right way we could.

The amount of pressure that these government agencies can put on you,

it's unfathomable.

For them to come in and just, I mean, kneecap you.

That's just starts. I mean, it was devastating.

He was my best friend.

[sniffling]

And we worked together for so long.

Um, yeah, it's...

[clicks tongue]

[sniffles]

Tough time. And, you know, how it happened.

[sniffles]

[clicks tongue and inhales sharply]

You know, I'm the one who had to go identify him.

[breathing shakily]

And I'm the one who had to go tell my mom.

[sniffles and sighs]

[Muir] I find the FTC's playbook

just fundamentally repulsive and repugnant to due process of law.

And every businessperson in this country

should be petrified by what happened.

[Kim] Because I'm married to Scott,

in the government's eyes, it seems to me I...

just might as well be him.

They can just say, "Everything she has, we get."

I'm not allowed to have a credit card. I'm not allowed to use a debit card.

I'm not allowed to make a loan. I couldn't buy a car if I want to.

Friends and family are paying our bills.

So it's... it's...

it's rough.

Exactly how they go about the process of taking a house,

I don't know, but they do it all the time.

[Scott] I'm not Wells Fargo. I'm not Citibank. I'm not Deutsche Bank.

I'm not Bank of America.

I'm just a business guy from Kansas City.

And I get hit with a $1.266 billion judgment.

It's devastating.

And that's what they wanted.

They liquidate everything you have to try to pay the judgment.

How do you live? How do you support your family?

And you don't have a bank account. You don't have any businesses.

You don't have anything anymore. Pretty tough situation.

[Zabinski] Yeah, I bet no one ever in the history of America

has ever been as aggressively prosecuted as Scott Tucker

for something that's legal.

And yet, still, it never stops.

[Peterson] Eventually, the Justice Department started to notice

that these lenders were violating not just state-interstate limitations,

but also the federal government's racketeering statute.

This statute was originally adopted

to try and deal with the Mafia, loan sharks, and gambling rackets

and, you know, extortion rackets.

[Scott] We figured the FTC was our big battle.

But on a Wednesday morning, in February of '16,

a full FBI SWAT team came to my house and basically stormed in.

There's a big knock on the door and I can see from here.

So I rush over there and I look down,

and it's a man just folded arms,

bulletproof vest, and a pistol in his hand.

And I run back in my room because,

"What's going on? Please, God, no one get hurt."

[Kim] My understanding is that the FBI doesn't come and get you

unless they think you're going to flee

or you're about to commit a crime.

And Scott was on his exercise bike in the basement,

where he is every day, seven days a week.

So that was all about the show,

and intimidation, and embarrassment and humiliation.

And that's part of their MO.

[Scott] They take me out of here in handcuffs, put me in a car.

You would have thought that El Chapo was here.

[Muir] Scott's wife had called me

and said, "The FBI is here. They've arrested Scott."

I'm trying to assess the situation.

And while I was doing that, bang on the door.

Twelve to fifteen agents,

all dressed in tactical gear, bulletproof vests on, guns drawn,

and a tactical shotgun put in my front window

in front of my little girls.

Immediately, I tell my wife, "Get the girls upstairs,"

and walked outside and was arrested, handcuffed and put in a car.

If you want to arrest me, fine. I clearly can't stop you.

But do you need to come with a SWAT team and tactical shotguns

at 7:00 in the morning,

when you know I have little girls and we're on our way to school?

[Follis] We had eight or nine real good years

until the federal government steps in and stops everything.

If you want me to name the culprit, I will.

Southern District of New York.

The Southern District have got a world of power.

And they are like we are. They're sovereign.

They can't be touched by anybody.

They threatened to sue us.

They threatened to indict us. They've threatened everything.

When you're threatened by the federal government, you go to war.

Just like my tribe did in... Back in the 1800s.

If you bow down to them, they're gonna run over you.

And I was advised by my attorneys in New York to get out.

Do not continue business. But I didn't...

because we hadn't done anything wrong.

It's a legal business. If it was illegal, I wouldn't do it.

Hello, folks.

The federal government knocked us out, but we're still in the loan business.

It's a small drop in the bucket, what we got now,

but we're building it back.

[Muir] We are facing RICO,

a racketeering act that Congress passed primarily for Mafia.

We have charges of wire fraud.

We have charges of money laundering and we have TILA criminal charges.

It is a criminal indictment

and because of the financial harm alleged in that indictment,

that is effectively a life sentence for us.

[Scott] I'm sure they wanted to make an example of me.

They wanted to destroy me financially.

But it even gets better. All of the money that I had

in my attorney's trust accounts for my criminal defense,

they took that, too. And would not release it.

And the judge in New York was forced to give me a court-appointed attorney.

They said, "Come in and plea to what we put on the table.

If not, we'll add these additional charges.

You're going to prison for the rest of your life."

[Muir] I don't want an acquittal. I don't want one holdout.

I need to find a way to explain to my little girls

why those people came to our home, handcuffed me and stuffed me in a car.

And the only way I get that is a "Not guilty."

You want to have a policy debate about payday lending? Let's have it.

You want to discuss whether or not

you think tribes exercising their sovereignty

can engage in this or that business?

Let's have it.

But when you want to legislate through federal criminal prosecutions,

fuck you.

That I'm not gonna tolerate. Now I'm pissed.

And I will turn this around and shove it up their ass.

[tires screeching]

It's a rigged game.

[Jia] "All of my Father.

All of my father's problems were solved by boxes.

When the dog barked, he put it in a box.

When he had something broken, he put it in a box. And when his..."

[clears throat] Sorry.

"And when his brother jumped off a six-story building,

he ended up putting him in a box, too.

That broke my heart.

All of my father disappeared when he was arrested.

All of my father is in a box and he never comes out.

God, why won't he come out?

I've not seen his face in a year,

and yet the circles under his sleepless eyes

and his bone bare body I can see.

He's a good man.

I swear, he's a good man. He's a good man."

He was a great businessman, but reputation is everything.

And so that's gone. His business is gone.

He'll be seen as a loser in the eyes of everyone else.

I mean, of course he'll still be my father

and I'll still love him and be proud of him, no matter what happens.

'Cause he fought and I know he fought.

But they're not gonna be the same parents.

[Scott] I know when you're hungry, you're hungry.

Yeah.

When you said you want some meat to eat, I said...

[Jia] There'll be friends who have read those one-sided stories

and they'll say, "Oh, don't worry. I know you're not like your father."

I'll say, "Yeah, I'm like my father." I'm gonna defend that.

Of course, there'll be some doubt in your mind,

but I don't think it's ever been strong enough for me to believe it.

Uh...

I'm pretty confident in my father's innocence.

My testimony meant something.

He's an innocent man.

[Archer] If I was in a room with Scott Tucker,

I would tell him that there are millions that you probably put in a position

where, at least temporarily, they were homeless.

Or they did without electricity.

Or their water, sewage or garbage was turned off.

Maybe they did without food for a while so the kids could eat.

Your greed put them in a very bad position.

[inaudible]

And you need to stand up and take accountability

for what you have done and publicly apologize.

[Jesse Moss] So this is the FTC's smoking gun. The money bag document.

I don't even know what to say. This... I wasn't involved in any of these things.

Uh, somebody put a money bag on here.

I mean, I don't even know how to comment to it.

I mean, you know, it was a training... training document.

And, uh...

I mean... That's what I guess the trainer does.

[man] Get ready to stop. Easy, easy...

[Chessin] When it comes to protecting consumers,

in certain aspects, the free market model starts to break down.

And when you have people who are so financially desperate

that they will suffer almost anything

to be able to put food on their table,

that is where those who are less scrupulous

can come in and take advantage.

[Heath] It was conceived to break the law.

It was a $2 billion business, and they...

It was set up to get around state lending laws.

It's clear to me that he's a con man.

I don't know how a person lives with that.

That they make money by essentially taking money from poor people.

And living the high life.

[Moss] Your critics throw around this term, predatory lending.

-Okay. -[Moss] Are you a predator?

Am I a predator?

No.

I mean, it's just a business. There was a demand,

consumer, and you know, the business was built around that.

Do you think you're a moral person?

I'm a businessperson.

If Scott Tucker were to be found guilty in a criminal court and sent to prison,

I don't think there's a prison term long enough

that would be suitable, in my opinion.

[Peterson] Is it gonna be the Wild West where people can be deceived,

and products don't work for folks?

Or should we have somebody that's watching out for consumers

and have products that work for them and help them,

as opposed to traps and tricks

that lead people into disappointment and despair?

We have a choice as a society.

[music playing]