Data from the Payday Nation project, published June 17, 2014. The data was, in part, obtained via a Freedom of Information request to the Federal Trade Commission by Julia Harte, Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein & Nick Nehamas and was combined with subsequent reporting to link payday lending companies to their associated tribe. Geocoding was performed using Texas A&M GeoServices. OCR was performed by ABBYY FineReader Express.
The stories and graphics for Payday Nation were reported and produced in collaboration with the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University in New York.
All files in this folder can be found in 2014_payday-nation.zip.
If you have questions about this data email us at ajammultimedia@gmail.com.
These complaints have not been investigated by the FTC nor have they been independently verified.
This data powers the interactive on this page. This repo contains two groups of data:
- Detailed complaints against ten payday lending companies including the text of the consumer's complaint:
detailed-complaint-texts.csvand associated PDF and RTF files. - Less detailed but more comprehensive data showing the city and state of complaints against a much larger group of payday lenders:
pdl-complaints.csv. - Topojson files of US states.
us-states.jsonhas land and state areas.us.jsonhas counties as well.
Both datasets cover complaints issued between February 2013 and February 2014.
The detailed data includes full text complaints from the following companies, which are associated with Native American tribes:
Tribe: Wakpamni Lake Community of the Oglala Sioux Tribe
- Fast Money Store
- Boulevard Cash
- Cash Cloud
Tribe: Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake
- Golden Valley Lending
- Mountain Summit Financial
- Silver Cloud Financial
Tribe: La Posta Band of Mission Indians
- Harvest Moon Loans
- Gentle Breeze Loans
Tribe: Guidiville Indian Rancheria
- National Payday Loans
- Gallery Cash Now
File descriptions:
Complaints FOIA.pdf- Complaints filed with the FTC against the companies affiliated with the Wakpamni Lake Community of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.Complaints FOIA.rtf- An OCRd version ofComplaints FOIA.pdfFull Complaints.pdf- Complaints filed with the FTC against the other companies listed above.Full Complaints.rtf- An OCRd version ofFull Complaints.pdfdetailed-complaint-texts.csv- Data extracted from the above PDFs that had complaint text. Also includes complaint metadata including reference number, consumer age range, consumer city and consumer state (with lat/lngs), affiliated tribe, tribe city and state, loan amount requested, and loan amount paid.
File description:
pdl-complaints.csv- A list of all complaints against the 23 tribes, listed below, between February 2013 and February 2014. This data is not as detailed as the PDF complaints but it contains information on more companies. Obtaining full complaint data for every complaint would have significantly delayed the project.
Tribes in pdl-complaints.csv:
- Miami Tribe of Oklahoma
- Otoe-Missouria Tribe
- Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana
- Chippewa-Cree Tribe of Rocky Boy Montana
- Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska
- Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma
- Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe
- Fort Belknap Indian Community
- Guidiville Indian Rancheria
- Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians
- Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake
- Wakpamni Lake Community of the Oglala Sioux Tribe
- United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians
- Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians
- Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation
- La Posta Band of Mission Indians
- Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians
- Big Lagoon Rancheria
- Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel
- Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians
- Big Valley Rancheria
- Resighini Rancheria
- Sokaogon Chippewa Community
Companies in pdl-complaints.csv:
- 500FastCash
- American Loans
- American Web Loan
- Ameriloan
- AMG Services
- Arrow One
- Bayside Cash
- Big Eye Lending
- Black Bear Advance
- BLR Tribal Services
- Blue King
- Bluechip Financial
- Boulevard Cash
- Bright Day Loans
- Cash Cloud
- Castle Payday
- Clear Loan Solutions
- Clearwater Lending
- Cover Me Cash
- Fast Money Store
- Fireside Cash
- First American Capital Resources
- Gallery Cash Now
- Golden Valley
- Great Plains Lending
- Green Corp Cash
- Green Trust
- Greenline Loans
- Harvest Moon Loans
- Island Finance
- La Posta
- Lakota Cash
- Miami Nation Enterprises
- Minute Funds
- Mobiloans
- Money Loans Quick
- Mountain Summit
- MTE Financial
- National Payday Loan
- Niizh
- Northern Plains Funding
- OneClickCash
- Pacific Cash
- Payday Financial
- Plain Green
- Red Cedar Services
- Red Rock Tribal Lending
- Riverbend Finance
- Seaside Dollar
- Seaside Payday
- SFS
- Silver Cloud
- Sky Lending
- Sovereign Advance
- Splash Cash Advance
- Spotloan
- Target Finance
- Tremont Lending
- Tribal Financial Services
- Tribal Lending Enterprise
- United Cash Loans
- US Fast Cash
- West River
- Western Sky Financial