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     | Tuesday, March 28, 2000 - 02:38 pm  The guy whose identity is Sean has admitted to loaning people who post on this board money at outrageous interest rates. People beware! For shame! http://www.bayhouse.com/discus/messages/4/189.html?954289974 (Under FICO Scoring is FRAUD)
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| | Tuesday, March 28, 2000 - 06:34 pm Sean will shark you in a heart beat.
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| | Tuesday, March 28, 2000 - 06:37 pm Wow, I loan money to people at rates that are perfectly legal to help them out of a jam. Big whoop. Loansharking: The practice of lending money at usurious, often illegal interest rates. I did just such a loan today. Someone needed $20 and I told them to give me a post-dated check for $21 and I'd give them a $20. Is it illegal to make a buck (literally, one buck) now?
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| | Tuesday, March 28, 2000 - 10:30 pm Sean, I didn't know you are a licensed lender. Do you have a consumer finance license?
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 05:45 am Sean- Legal or not, I feel Credit card rates are totally outrageous, and should be illegal. It happens to be highway robbery. Just because the general public is not aware of how much interest actually ends up costing them. How can you hide behind the statement "it's legal". Well, in my opinion, and many others, that doesn't make it ethical. Any lending of money over 12% APR is outrageously high (and that's even ppushing it). To claim that the rate is so high because of the risk is BS. It is taking advantage pure and simple. -Dan
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 06:31 am It seems that Sean has the ablility to actually help someone now and again. Even if you don't agree with the fact that someone who is taking a risk is entitled to gain from that risk (you seem to be just disagreeing on degree of gain), Sean is actually giving someone a better deal than what they currently have. What can possibly be wrong with that? (He is an individual not a charity.)
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 06:38 am Sean is doing nothing wrong. I doubt seriously that he is cracking any knees to make anyone take his money. Get over it! Reward should be commensurate with risk.
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 07:40 am Christine: You're operating under a false understanding of the usury law. You seem to think that usury laws apply to everyone unless they have a consumer finance license. In reality the usury law is so riddled with exceptions pratically anyone who can make a campaign contribution can get an exception. Check cashing places, pawnbrokers, Realtors, construction companies and many other special interests have special loopholes installed just for them to exploit. Imagine I go to a computer store with a friend and she sees a 19" computer monitor she wants. She says, "Gee, I really want that, but I don't have the money. I wonder if I they offer financing or if I could find someone to loan me the money for it." Not a problem. I buy the monitor (let's say it's $100 to keep the numbers easy) and I re-sell it to my friend for $120 at 0% interest 12 easy payments of $10. Right there as far as the law's concerned I loaned out $120 at 0% interest and that's perfectly legal. From my point of view I just loaned out $100 at 35.07% interest. Yummy.
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 07:51 am Here's an interesting article.
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 08:39 am I looked through this entire thread, performed a word search of "usury," and found every item posted by Christine, but the only thing I could find was this: After reviewing two of his subsequent posts, I couldn't find where he answered the question. Here's a lesson: Q: What city it the capital of Ohio? A: (correct answer) Columbus. A: (incorrect answer)
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 09:19 am Here's a quiz for you, Greg, let's see if you get the answer right. A guy walks up to an attractive brunette behind the counter and after some conversation asks, "Hey, what time do you get off work?" She replies, "I'm married." Did she answer the question?
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 10:01 am Not directly. But this forum isn't The Dating Game. Never one for presumption, I'll go out on a limb and ask why it took you four paragraphs to say the same thing as you could have with two letters. "No" was the answer, wasn't it? Or can't you bear answering (as usual)?
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 11:23 am I have a few comments here: 1) I did a search for usury a few months back and found that the maximum rate is 10% in the Cal .gov pages. The usury law only applies to UNLICENSED lenders. I looked because I had made a loan to a relative and I expected that she would stop paying. It's a coincidence that I had charged her 10%, I had done what Sean is doing. She had paid up to 28% for credit cards because her credit was maxed out. Our deal was that she would pay off her cards, and then when her Score got better due to low balances a few months later, she would pay me off in full. Unfortunately, she decided to change the terms, occasionally she paid a few thousand, she always paid at least the monthly interest, no payment this month though. I would have liked to do other things with that money, but she didn't care and has not responded to E-mails in a year now. I doubt I'll sue her, it's over $5,000, so Small Claims is out. HOWEVER, I could sue her, because I'm charging her the legal rate. I believe that Sean CAN NOT SUE because he is violating State law. Or if he sues, the judge will void the interest? Something like that? Am I correct? 2) I have always said that lenders a licensed to steal. I don't object to high yields for high risk loans. No doubt, there are a lot of dead beats out there. HOWEVER, I object to high yields for LOW risk loans. I especially object to deceptive advertising, credit scoring, and the outrageous fees the LICENSED lenders are charging. Sean posted some good examples. 300% pay check loans are not unusual and 100% legal in New Mexico. I object to lenders expecting ME to do THEIR accounting, lenders purposely posting payments late, lenders NOT paying me for my time having to fix their screw ups. 3) People have to understand that *I* wouldn't want to spend 2 hours on making a loan for $100 for one month even for a $100 profit (interest.) That would be something like 1,200% interest. Yet it would still be less than my normal hourly fee of $75. And of course I run the risk of losing the $100. Even at 1,200% interest I wouldn't want to make that loan. Would you? 4) I've read most of the postings here, and never saw Sean soliciting loans. It was mentioned once, and I figure if people E-mail Sean and borrow money, it's probably because they DO get a better deal than with LICENSED lenders. I assume that those borrowers have read Sean's postings here and are aware that he is doing NOTHING out of kindness. The real problem is NOT Sean's interest rates, it's that those people have no other place to go. Because for whatever reason their Credit Scores are too low for better deals elsewhere. Sean doesn't like the few consumer protection laws we have. If so many people didn't think like Sean we didn't need them. The Americans with power and money ARE like Sean, you HAVE to be ruthless to obtain power and money, nice guys finish last in America today. That's why we need more laws, and we especially need more enforcement. We need mandated treble damages or specific amounts for many violations so that anyone can win in Small Claims. When a lender charges a $25 late fee, we need to be entitled to an equal $25 for every time that lender makes a mistake. $25 for every phone call, 3 times that for every letter. And of course, we need to get rid of Credit Scoring.
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 01:14 pm Well, it could be the dating game. At least we get along better in that forum.
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 02:00 pm All i got say is you screw up your credit if you need money or a loan you will pay the price. In Florida if you loan a $100 you can get $200 back no law on the books say you can't.
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| | Wednesday, March 29, 2000 - 02:57 pm Voigtkampff, my first thought was that fortunately *most* people don't need money as bad as a date. But then I remembered the times when one guy told another to stop looking at his girlfriend and a few minutes later they beat the crap out of each other. People even KILL over dates, and it surprises me how few people shoot their lenders. And that anonymous again proved my point, we need more laws .... Ever wonder how many people would go around killing, looting and raping if it wasn't illegal?
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 07:05 am I'm the one that solicited Sean for a loan. I e-mailed him with a rundown of my situation and he offered to help me. It was at an extremely better rate than what I was paying. Also, what he fails to mention (might make him look like a nice guy) is that after a few months of payments, he lowered the interest rate. Is this really any different than if I followed the link from Carreon & Associates (or any of the numerous links provided by posters here) and signed up for their service. Rhonda: I really don't see why this should concern you, it is really none of your business.
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 08:53 am Judy, it is everybody's business who reads and posts here. Apparently you haven't figured out that the main purposes of this forum is to share who does what in the lending and credit business. DUH! And of course Sean now knows that his loans aren't legally enforcable. He's only got $5K invested, beats having 50K out there and THEN finding out that you can't sue for payment. Or even worse, he could be lending to people who learn about usury and then just stop paying, knowing he can't do a thing about it. I think this was one of the more productive discussions.
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 09:09 am Hah, I just had another thought! Sean argues over and over that lenders have the right to fleece people because it is LEGAL. When people get screwed, he tells them that it was their OWN fault for not doing more shopping or research. If the people who borrowed money from Sean share Sean's philosophy, if they're members of the Kato Institute, they'll stop paying right now.
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 09:49 am Hmmm, I thought the purpose of this forum was to help people who have credit questions and/or problems. I (still) don't feel that anybody needs to be "warned" about Sean. He is not on here soliciting to make loans to anybody. He is simply giving his advice and/or opinion, just like everybody else. Oh, and by the way, I have no intention of not paying him. Regardless of the legality of the loan. He is correct. If I'm getting screwed, it is my own fault.
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 09:55 am Something interesting Judy, If you default on his loan, and he can't legally do anything about it, then is that fair too? According to Sean's logic it would be because it is legal. Just my thoughts. -Dan
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 10:40 am Yes, I am Sean's Girlfriend. And no, just because i am dose not make me automactically agree with him and his actions. Sean lent me the 20 dollars. I insisted that he charge me some interst. He made a buck off me(literally). What you people don't seem to understand is how much of an asset he is to those whom he lends money to. The people he conducts business with are so incredibly greatfull to him for getting them out of a bind. Why pay interst to a huge impersonal company, when you can pay it to a caring and understanding indivial. Who gives you kick backs, after a point where he feels the person is not as much of a risk as he first thought. I just wanted to say that. I also find all your comments to be intersting and insightful. I enjoy reading this forum.
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 10:44 am Christine: I forgot to ask you, what is the Kato Institute? Dan: Is it fair to Sean if I default on the loan? Not hardly, but I guess that is why he can justify his higher rates. Besides, I don't for a second think there is NOTHING he could do about it.
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| | Friday, March 31, 2000 - 12:52 pm First of all it's the Cato Institute and it's a very influential think tank. Five out of nine members of the United States Supreme Court are members of the Cato Institute. It is not uncommon for Cato Institute quotations to become part of case law. Of course this only affects federal law and we're discussing a state issue. Christine seems to have a misconception of the usury law. She views the law as the crushing jaws of a giant justice-dealer that smash down on any lender that chances across the line inflicting horrible damage to them. The reality is she has a misunderstanding of California law on a variety of points and it's not worth my time to go into here. If someone is really interested in the details of usury law from the perspective of a California lender I suggest you pick up a copy of "Smart Trust Deed Investment In California" by George Coats and go straight to Appendix D. I have provided Judy with a fair deal -- better than the one she had. In addition I got her credit report and her score, showed her both, gave her the reasons why she didn't score better and helped her with her credit profile. She's happy, I'm happy and it isn't really anyone else's business is it? Anyone who thinks that a lender's sole recourse is a lawsuit is naive. I would consider an initial conversation and placing negative credit information to be my first line of attack. Does anyone else have a different experience with lenders?
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| | Saturday, April 01, 2000 - 06:46 pm OK, Sean, you asked for it. You started by posting: "Wow, I loan money to people at rates that are perfectly legal to help them out of a jam." Sean, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that you ever helped anyone other than yourself. You charge your g/f interest on a $20 loan. You're OBSESSED with money. In your last posting you wrote: "Christine seems to have a misconception of the usury law." Read this page, Sean: http://caag.state.ca.us/piu/usury.htm "The California Constitution allows parties to contract for interest on a loan primarily for personal, family or household purposes at a rate not exceeding 10% per year." And then please tell me why you think you are exempt from California Usury laws. What is MY misconception? "The usury laws do not apply to any real estate broker if the loan is secured by real estate. This applies whether or not he or she is acting as a real estate broker. The limitations also do not apply to most lending institutions such as banks, credit unions, finance companies, pawn brokers, etc." Unless you ARE licensed as one of the exempt organizations, should you report negative information to the credit bureaus, the debtors can sue you and WIN bigtime. Since you now KNOW that your loans aren't legal it would be willful disregard of the law and you'd have absolutely no excuse. And, you publicly admitted in your discussion with Greg that you are AWARE of mandated disclosures but you just don't think they're necessary. Even WITHOUT usury, purposely omitting mandated disclosures could leave you paying much more in penalties than you ever loaned. Why do you post your disregard for disclosures, admitting publicly in the forum that you didn't provide required disclosures? You really don't know when to shut up. Again from that page: "Since there are exceptions, and the penalties for violating usury laws are severe, individuals making loans for which there are interest charges should contact an attorney for further guidance." I wouldn't rely on those books you're reading, any idiot can publish anything they want. I'd stick with the .gov pages or hire an experienced CALIFORNIA attorney. When I first started brokering mortgages, I made up a flier offering $250 referral fees to real estate people. I found out a while later that this is VERY illegal. I didn't start claiming that I was exempt. I said ooops, never offered another referral fee, and was glad nobody had responded to my offer. Sean, you didn't just stumble out of the woods like Robert with an IQ below 60. You obtain the borrower's credit reports, you post publicly as an expert on credit and finance matters, you answered hundreds of legal questions in this forum. You should know better.
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| | Sunday, April 02, 2000 - 06:18 am Ok let's take a simple example. Let's say you come out here to California and you ask me to loan you $1,000 at 18% interest. I agree. You immediately claim the loan rate is usurious and you don't pay. What happens? I go to court and I sue. You show up to contest the matter and you demonstrate conclusively that the interest rate is 18 percent and that the maximum in the state is 10 percent. You lose. I get a judgement for $1,000 against you and the judge rewrites the interest rate to 10 percent. Forty-eight hours later notice of this judgement hits all three of your credit reports. Tsk, tsk. How can that be? Well two things: 1) You solicited me for a loan, I did not solicit you for a loan. In fact, depending on how you solicited me for the loan, you might be guilty of selling securities without a license -- a breach of securities law and the SEC might get involved in order to prosecute you. Pretty unlikely, but it might happen. 2) Usury requires the payment of usurious interest. Since no payment changed hands, the loan is still untainted. Now let's take an actual usury case -- one of the most common ways someone accidentally commits usury. Two friends get together and one agrees to loan another $1,000 at 10% interest with 12 payments of $87.92 amortizing the loan. This is a usurious loan because the effective interest rate is 10.47 percent due to the monthly compounding. Let's further say the case ends up before a judge because the payor stopped paying after making two payments and a usury defense is raised. The judge will agree that the loan was accidentally usurious and he will strip the loan of all the usurious interest paid ($16.00) and he will award the creditor a judgement in the amount of $984 (the original principal minus the $16 of usurious interest). As a further note judgements in California bear interest at 10 percent per annum. Let's take another example: Person A loans Mr. Debtor $500 and has him sign a promissory note to repay $1,000 at 9% interest compounding monthly -- effectively this is 165.26% interest due to the 100 points up front. Person A sells that loan to person B. The next month someone tells the debtor the loan is usurious and he stops paying. Person B sues him and wins. Usury is not a valid defense against a holder-in-due-course, a legally preferred status. Let's take another example: Person A loans Person B $1,000 at 100% interest per month. Person B pays back $1,000 at the end of the month and informs person A that he isn't going to pay anymore. "The loan is usurious," he claims. "The judge will strip you of all interest ($1,000) and rule that I've completely paid all of the principal." Two years later Person A sues Person B. They both appear in court and Person B claims a usury defense. Person B loses and Person A gets a judgement against him for $1,000 principal. Why? The statute of limitations on usury is 2 years and the statute of limitations on written contracts in California is 4. California usury law is a lot more complicated than you seem to think. A big mistake that people make is assume that laws make sense. Most of the time laws make no sense at all. This is because laws are crafted as a result of compromise between two factions that frequently want the opposite results. Democrats like "feel-good" consumer-protection legislation. It doesn't matter to them that their legislation doesn't actually protect consumers. They just like to be able to stand up at the next election and say, "Look at what I did to protect you people. I feel your pain. Vote for me to continue protecting you against the big corporate interests." What he won't say is that the Republicans in the assembly installed enough loopholes into his "consumer protection" legislation that it looks more like swiss-cheese than a law. Not to mention that "case law" installs half a dozen more loopholes and exceptions within a year or two of the law passing. And before I forget I wanted to mention that it's not usury if the lender charges extra to recover their costs of making the loan. For example let's say Feral LLC contacts you offering to loan you $500. They charge 25 points and 0 interest. You repay with 5 easy weekly installments of $125. Is this 655.48% effective APR usury? Not necessarily, especially if they show that their loan processor was paid $100 to process the loan and the credit report cost $15. A lender is entitled to charge to recover costs, y'know. The usury situation is nowhere near as cut-and-dried as you make it out to be. Again, I tell anyone who is really interested in some of the important details of California usury laws from the perspective of lender-dos and lender-don'ts they should pick up a copy of "Smart Trust Deed Investment In California" by George Coats. I think Christine has a link off of her main page to Amazon.com and she gets a kickback from them on every order placed. Check it out.
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| | Sunday, April 02, 2000 - 12:04 pm Sean, don't post here anymore. 1) Directly under the Amazon link I disclose: "To SUPPORT the BayHouse web site please place your Amazon.com orders from THIS link." While there is no legal requirement to disclose referral fees from a link, I thought readers should know. That's how *I* operate. 2) You're obviously trying to convince the people who owe you that they should continue to pay you. Your bla bla bla contains not ONE reference to California law. As so often when you make incorrect statements, you start talking about something completely different. Buying trust deeds has nothing to do with making usurious personal loans. You are beginning to sound like Robert with his tradelines. I refer back to my previous posting http://www.bayhouse.com/discus/messages/4/452.html?954696334#POST3132 And I don't recommend relying on books on trust deeds (mortgages) to learn about California usury laws. For the readers who don't know, Sean's name is NOT Sean. He's hiding on a hot mail account. The BayHouse stalker, scammer, and loanshark forum? Hell, no. There's gonna be some changes. Oh, I nearly forgot. Just for the record: Sean IS a loanshark. And if Sean disagrees, he can sue me.
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| | Sunday, May 07, 2000 - 12:41 am On April 18 Sean posted at creditinfocenter.com: By Sean on Tuesday, April 18, 2000 - 09:11 pm: I recently got thrown off a credit discussion forum because the moderator got a hair up her butt. She called me a loan shark, said if I didn't like it I could sue her and that I wasn't welcome to come around anymore. Well, I'm not about to sue. I don't care if someone stands up in the middle of the street and loudly proclaims that the world is flat or that mankind has never been to the moon. I'm not going to sue them either. Similarly I don't care if someone stands up and calls me a loan shark or accuses me of usury. Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. This is a free country and if someone wants to buy an internet site and stand up and say things that are crazy, absurd and wrong them I say HEY! That's what a free country is all about. What are my damages? They seem to be $0.00 -- I'm not harmed. It's her site; she pays for it. If she doesn't want me there, I'll leave. I'm fine with the KKK saying what they want. I'm fine with the communists saying what they want. I'm even okay with Bill Clinton shaking his finger and swearing he did not have sexual relations with that woman. Censorship is wrong. Freedom is right. With any luck America will be a free country long after I'm dead. God bless America. -------------------------------------------- And my response was: By Christine Baker on Sunday, April 23, 2000 - 07:46 pm: And here is one for Sean: Since you continue to harp on your lending and my assessment of your lending practices, I'll offer to pay for the expenses to have the California Attorney General determine the legality of the loans you originate. I absolutely agree that your loans as described at bayhouse.com are HELPING people. If it is in fact legal for unlicensed lenders in California to charge more than 10%, I want to encourage people to make these loans. I much rather see an individual make 150% interest than a licensed lender making 300%. It cuts somebody's interest payments in half, that's a good thing. I could create a special section for people to post their current financing terms. It would be fantastic to give ordinary people the opportunity to LEND money. Most people don't have a clue how much work is involved. I could make it easier for them by providing a basic loan agreement on the web, but the most difficult part is determining the risks and deciding whether to make the loan at all. EVERYBODY should make a few loans. Not as a business, but for the experience. The lenders learn, the borrowers save, what could be better? I just need to know that what we're doing is legal. So how can we get an official California legal opinion? ---------------------------------------------- Neither Sean nor anyone else responded. It would be wonderful if we could legally use this forum to create "win-win" situations, consumers helping consumers. If anyone has any suggestions on how to accomplish that, please post.
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