Level 5 owner Tucker convicted of illegal payday lending

Former sports car driving champion and Level 5 Motorsports team owner Scott Tucker and his lawyer Timothy Muir were convicted of illegal payday lending practices on Friday.

A jury in Manhattan, N.Y., returned a guilty verdict for Tucker and Muir on a number of significant charges, including Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) crimes, Truth-in-Lending Act (TILA) violations, and found Tucker's defense, which positioned the payday loan business as being owned by Native American tribes, to be untrue.

In a press release issued by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim stated: "As a unanimous jury found today, Scott Tucker and Timothy Muir targeted and exploited millions of struggling, everyday Americans by charging them illegally high interest rates on payday loans, as much as 700 percent.

"Tucker and Muir sought to get away with their crimes by claiming that this $3.5 billion business was actually owned and operated by Native American tribes. But that was a lie. The jury saw through Tucker and Muir's lies and saw their business for what it was – an illegal and predatory scheme to take callous advantage of vulnerable workers living from paycheck to paycheck."

According to the release, every charge leveled against the two men fell in the prosecution's favor: "Tucker, 55, and Muir, 46, were convicted in all 14 counts in the Indictment, including one count of conspiring to commit racketeering through the collection of unlawful debt, three counts of participating in a racketeering enterprise through the collection of unlawful debt, one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud, one count of wire fraud, one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, two counts of money laundering, and five counts of violating TILA."

A 2016 civil lawsuit brought against Tucker by the Federal Trade Commission resulted in a $1.3 billion fine, which is still under appeal. Where Friday's conviction takes Tucker and Muir in terms of additional fines or possible jail time, is unknown.