Judge orders Leawood’s brother payday loan mogul Scott Tucker to surrender


Joel Tucker

Joel Tucker

A federal bankruptcy judge in Texas has ordered Joel Tucker, a Kansas City businessman, to surrender to the US Marshals in Houston by July 29th.

Marvin Isgur, a Houston bankruptcy judge, wrote in an order that Tucker failed to keep a record of the debts of payday loans that he allegedly sold to debt collection agencies. Collectors now believe the portfolios are fraudulent.

Tucker, who has residences in Colorado and Prairie Village, is the brother of Scott Tucker, a professional Leawood racing driver who was accused by a New York grand jury of conducting an illegal business with a $ 2 billion payday loan.

Joel Tucker once owned eData Solutions, a Kansas City company that generated leads and sold them to payday loan companies. He later sold eData Solutions to the Wyandotte Nation Tribe of Oklahoma for millions.

Tucker was the focus of bankruptcy proceedings in Texas earlier this year.

Houston judges identified a number of consumer bankruptcy cases in late 2015, with debtors questioning the validity of payday loan debts claimed by collection agencies.

Isgur demanded that three debt collection agencies – Atlas Acquisitions, Porania, and JH Portfolio Debt Equities – explain why their payday loan claims, often $ 390, were routinely contested in bankruptcy cases.

In court records last year, Porania said it paid a broker $ 72,538 for a portfolio of 15,000 payday loan debts worth $ 390 each. Collection agencies buy unpaid debts from creditors, often for pennies per dollar, and try to collect the full amount owed.

Collectors believe Porania’s portfolio was created by Joel Tucker.

Tucker was ordered to testify and produce records in Houston to prove the origin of the payday loan debt. So far, Tucker has not produced enough evidence to please the Texas judge. Isgur also admonished Tucker for making contradicting statements about the origin of his debts.

Isgur, who ordered Tucker’s handover to law enforcement, said Tucker “misdirected the court in useless ways” through a lawsuit.

Tucker and his Houston attorney, Jim Wetwiska, were not available for comment.

The debt collection agencies, now believing the debt portfolios they bought to be fraudulent, have withdrawn more than 1,000 of their claims from bankruptcy courts across the country.

This story was originally published July 22, 2016 3:52 pm.


Comments are closed.