An 83-year-old woman who ran a money lending scheme has been told she must repay more than £173,000 to six victims after a loan shark investigation. Tabitha Richardson had operated as a loan shark for over 20 years before she was detected, and her victims paid her tens of thousands of pounds in illegal interest on top of their loans.
Loan sharks like Richardson are on the rise due to financial pressure felt by people across the UK, and there are more loan sharks than ever under investigation, according to the agency Stop Loan Sharks Wales which brought Richardson’s actions to light. Perpetrators and their victims often belong to the same communities, and recent cases have come from within church groups and the care industry.
Methods of intimidation include threats of violence, stealing goods in lieu of payment, and even kidnapping. Ryan Evans, a client liaison officer with Stop Loan Sharks Wales, said he was seeing more active cases now than in the whole of his 11-year stint with the agency. Seemingly respectable people like Richardson can create enough fear in people, particularly those who are already vulnerable, to keep them in financial thrall for years.
For Richardson’s victims, they were not necessarily afraid of her directly but of people she knew, and this is a common theme. Richardson was a good example, which according to Ryan, was especially common in Wales, of being “the big fish in a small pond”. The amounts ranged from £80 to £20,000 over a period of time. Ryan said disabled and vulnerable people, such as those with mental health issues and learning difficulties, were also much more likely to be victims of loan sharks in Wales than in other parts of the UK.
“What we do tend to see in Wales is what I would call the vicious opportunists. They’re actively going out and [using] grooming tactics to groom people into becoming victims,” Ryan added
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