U.S. v. Adrian Rubin

USA v. Rubin 

Criminal docket number 15cr238

Adrian Rubin has been charged with participation in a racketeering conspiracy for the operation of a “payday lending” business that allegedly violated the usury laws of Pennsylvania and other states. According to the information, between 1998 and 2012, Rubin owned, controlled, financed, and/or worked for multiple businesses that issued short-term loans, commonly known as “payday loans.”  Rubin allegedly conspired with other people to evade state usury laws and other restrictions on payday loans by engaging in a series of deceptive business practices that included: (a) paying a federally-insured bank, which was not subject to state laws, to pretend that it was the payday lender; (b) relocating his operations to a state considered “usury friendly;” and (c) paying an Indian tribe to pretend that it was the actual payday lender as part of a scheme to have the tribe claim that “sovereign immunity” prevent application of state usury laws and other regulations.

Rubin and his co-conspirators also allegedly went to great lengths to hide Rubin’s personal involvement in the payday lending business because he had a criminal record.  It is further alleged that Rubin, with the knowledge of his co-conspirators, incorporated his payday businesses in the names of his father-in-law and a family friend and then forged the signatures of those people on company documents.  In total, it is alleged that Rubin and his co-conspirators reaped tens of millions of dollars from the defendant’s payday lending activities, much of which stemmed from the collection of fees that were usurious in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.