Q: Are payday loans dischargeable in bankruptcy?

A: Yes, you can list a payday loan on your bankruptcy schedules, however you should realize that it will have little to no effect. Payday loans by their very nature are illegal. Filing bankruptcy to remove payday loans is like asking your mugger to put his gun away and leave you alone because you have diplomatic immunity. The mugger doesn’t care.

Worse than that, you have given over all of your personal information to some nameless people in some distant country. They have sold your information countless times and are very likely engaging in identity theft all over the world with your formerly good name. You would be well advised to consider checking your credit report regularly now and perhaps even putting a freeze on it. Some of the people that I have come in contact with recently that are con-artist/pay day loan people are O’Bannion and Water Arbitration and Private Courier. They use innocuous names like Patrick and claim to be working out of the Sears Tower in Chicago, but in reality these payday loan people are working out of their homes on burner cell phones in India and Asia.

They will lie and tell you they are government agencies or even the police. They use fear and intimidation to steal your money. And many scared people willingly part with their money in hopes that they will go away. Unfortunately, they are like cats. If you put out a bowl of milk, the street cats will remember to come back time and time again looking for more. It just shows them you are an easy mark.

The moral of this story is never under any circumstances take a payday loan. Half the time they do not send the money. When they do, they charge usurious illegal interest rates and they steal your identity and threaten you forever like a loan shark. They say you can’t con an honest person, but its debatable when you look at the payday loan schemes.