Mo’ Money Taxes is closing its six Norfolk area locations shortly after police executed search warrants on its stores.

In Chicago, more Mo’ Money stores are closed.

Reports say that some stores are not accepting tax refund checks made out by Mo’ Money. A Chicago television station reports that Southside consumers cannot get their checks cashed.

Two Congressman, representing districts in Virginia and Tennessee, say they will ask Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate.

A Mo’ Money store manager in Nashville, Tennessee says that the decision by police to remove all the computers from his Mo’ Money store was merely pre-emptive. “The police took the computers out,” said Gallatin Pike Mo’ Money manager Toney Fields in an interview with a local television station. “They’re not seized. They just took them out because they thought the customers were going to steal them.”

Not the First Time

The North Carolina Commissioner of Banks investigated Mo’ Money Taxes in April 2010. Ultimately, Mo’ Money chose to give up its license to prepare taxes in the state.  Testers had found that Mo’ Money was not providing the disclosures required by state law.

Several banks have found a new way to short their customers. They are going to charge you to stop using their services.

Not every bank has made this step, but several have and their fees range from $10 to as high as $25. The minimum time to keep the account open falls between 90 days and six months.

SunTrust Bank says it will charge customers $25 if they do not keep a checking account for six months. While theirs is the highest fee and the one with the longest minimum, SunTrust is just one of about eight banks that are going to start the service, according to the Boston Globe. The Pew Research Center says that six of the nation’s ten largest banks now charge a fee to close an account that is held open for less than a specific period of time. I spoke with an account representative at SunTrust. She did not know there there was such a fee. However, she said that SunTrust would impose a $7 fee for any account where the balance fell below a minimum $500 over the course of a month. The fee could be avoided if you set up direct deposit. One takeaway from this situation is that both Pew and the Boston Globe are wrong, or the (more…)

Even as reports continue to show that getting a mortgage loan at Bank of America is difficult for many people, SEC filings show that the Charlotte bank has no problem extending financing to firms that do offer high-cost loans.

A recent example is the loan arranged by Bank of America for America’s Car Mart last October. Bank of America (more…)

If George Lopez sponsors a prepaid card but no one writes about it in the press, did it really happen?

When a celebrity endorses a prepaid card, it generates suspicion and skepticism. Prepaid card marketing firms continue to ignore the trend.

When Suze Orman announced that she was going to attach her name to a new prepaid card, the reaction by the press ignored the card’s rock-bottom pricing and focused instead on questions surrounding the integrity of her relationship to a financial product. It mattered little that the Approved Card, if used with direct deposit, can be far less expensive than for a low-wealth consumer than most bank checking accounts. What mattered was that Suze was a trusted advisor to mainstream America.

National media never paid much attention to prepaid before the celebrity endorsement. Last year’s failed partnership between a small Minnesota community development financial institution and Kim Kardashian was just about the first time that prepaid made it onto the national media consciousness. It generated some well-deserved criticism because it was so expensive. The card charged an account opening fee of $59! The attention given to that card created collateral damage for other players. It smudged the reputation of the product, but it suddenly framed the prepaid card through one perspective – that it cost too much. Few people know much about prepaid, but one of the few things that many can tell you is that the Kim Kardashian card was too expensive.

Given that evidence, why doesn’t anyone notice that George Lopez has his own tie in with a prepaid card? Let me say that it would probably be good news if more people learned about the Mango Card. The Mango Card is a great card. It does not cost much and it provides a clear pathway to a host of other important financial products.

There is one other exemption from the standard backlash against prepaid cards associated with celebrities. Russell Simmons, the co-founder of the Def Jam record label, has a financial tie to the Rush Card. Some of the Rush Cards are far more expensive than the Approved Card.

According to a report published yesterday, Rush Card owner Russell Simmons says his prepaid debit card will soon have a cash advance feature.

The advance will give customers who have enrolled their card in direct deposit the ability to draw cash two days ahead of their next scheduled paycheck or payment.

A spokesperson from Rush says that the service is free of a fee. Rush is going to extend the payment solely on the faith that customers with an existing direct deposit enrollment will have another coming in 48 hours.

The Rush Card is issued by Bancorp Bank. Since customer service at Rush only answers questions if you have an existing card, it is not possible to know the origin of this advance. It may be Bancorp, a different bank, or a non-bank financial institution.