Title: CLVerify, DPBureau, Grady Reynolds, Quietly Acquired Ownership in Jim Carnes ZipCash Payday Loan business.
Lenders Beware!
Several years ago a plan was developed between Grady Reynolds, Jim Carnes and Krishna Gopinathan which was kept fairly quiet amongst the payday lending community.
Grady Reynolds agreed to provide a full copy of the CL Verify credit bureau database to Krishna Gopinathan. This was done in direct violation of FCRA regulations as well as provisions of the contracts that CL Verify customers signed. The database was sent to Krishna in India, where she had a team of analysts and statisticians evaluate the reported loans, outcome of the reported loans and various other reported loan results. With these results they were able to develop a scoring model that would be used to achieve more profitable results in the payday loan industry.
The lucky recipient of this data and scoring model was Jim Carnes of ZipCash. Mr. Carnes used the model to make loan decisions and was very successful. This project was a result of a three way deal between Krishna Gopinathan, Jim Carnes, and the majority owners of CLVerify; Grady Reynolds and Joe Bartholomew. Basically, Grady Reynolds appropriated all of CVerify's customer's data, Krishna built a predictive model with the data, and Jim Carnes "cleaned up" in the online payday loan business. And supposedly, they split the profits.
Over time, the arrangement changed. Jim Carnes was making such good returns that Grady Reynolds and Joe Bartholomew decided to quietly become payday lenders. Perhaps this was one of the best kept secrets in the payday loan industry! They cleverly acquired an ownership stake in a portfolio operated by Jim Carnes. Jim and his portfolio continued to receive favorable and inside information from CL Verify to allow him to operate with good profit margins.
Rumor on the street is that to this day, Grady Reynolds and Joe Bartholomew are still non-public owners/investors in Jim Carnes loan portfolios. Can this be the reason we are seeing less and less reported data from lenders to CLVerify? Perhaps they have decided not to share their data with Jim Carnes for FREE!
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