Mo’ Money Taxes Gets a Slap Down

North Carolina Commissioner of Banks Joseph Smith issued a consent order against Mo’ Money Taxes of North Carolina and Derrick Robinson (owner) on Feb. 8th, penalizing the tax chain for violating state laws on refund anticipation loans.

The consent order, (pdf), states that Mo’ Money of NC was offering RALs, even though they failed to register as a refund anticipation loan facilitator. Registration is required by North Carolina state law.  Few states have a registration rule, but North Carolina is one of them.  Mo’ Money, headquartered in Memphis, is a new entrant to the North Carolina market this year.

The complaint began when a watchdog consumer advocacy group ran across Mo’ Money’s advertisements. The ads draw from blaxploitation films (African-American mobs)  for their themes.  Actually, that’s not the full extent. Mo’ Money is an equal opportunist, with films that play upon stereotypes of Latinos as well as rural white people.  Idiots are also singled out.

The consumer advocacy group entered a few of their local shops and found that there were none of the normal disclosures on their RALs.  The law states simply that RAL price schedules must be posted.  Mo’ Money’s walls were blank at every office that the group visited, save for one 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet of paper with pricing on tax services.  Oh, and those were high fees, by the way – as much as $315 for a basic 1040 with no deductions, no business income, and an EIC form.

OCOB was not happy about that.  Their order has two penalties:

• Mo’ Money must pay a fine of $13,000 ($1,000 for each store) for failing to register. That money goes to the North Carolina Civil Forfeiture Fund.
• Mo’ Money must make an annual certification, for the next five years, that they have no “meritorius” complaints filed against their operation.

Mo’ Money cannot make any RALs until they register.Mo’ Money has since registered.  Today, their web page is offline.

JP Morgan Chase provides the funding for their RALs. It will be interesting to see if JPM continues that relationship.  By OCC guidelines, any RAL funder is required to verify that their tax partners are implement relevant laws. It appears to be the case that JPMorgan Chase was not fulfilling that duty.  Now, wait for the next shoe to drop.