I borrowed cash from ‘family friend’ for Xmas – but things took sinister turn when he turned ‘pimp’ and targeted my wife

TWISTED loan sharks lending hard-up women money for Christmas are pimping out their victims, experts warn.

The Sun can reveal the sick crooks are blackmailing them into having sex with strangers and demanding intimate selfies to pay off their mounting debts as loan shark lending becomes increasingly “sleazy”.

England Illegal Money Lending TeamDad-of-four Anthony says a loan shark targeted his wife[/caption]

One man who borrowed cash for Christmas told how a perverted lender offered to knock money off their loan if his wife answered the door in skimpy lingerie. 

The dad-of-four, who lives in the West Midlands and borrowed around £10,000 in small amounts over the course of 15 years, said the family were able to make repayments easily until Covid hit and they suffered health issues.

The 39-year-old explained: “It was then he began really putting pressure on and started being intimidating, coming out with comments to my wife and in front of my daughter.

“Over the years it got worse. He asked my wife to wear sexy underwear, sexy bras and pants and stuff like that.

“I’ve got a 14-year-old daughter and she didn’t feel comfortable in her own house when he was there.

“He used to knock at the door knowing I wasn’t there, even though I told him specifically, ‘if my car isn’t here or my van isn’t here, then I’m not here’. I said that to him a million times, yet still he turned up when I was at work.”

The man’s wife point-blank refused to give in to the loan shark’s demands. He added: “We heard on the grapevine from other people that he was trying to make out if they gave him sexual favours it would pay some money off.”

The dad, who we are calling Anthony, met the lender through his mother-in-law and “considered him a family friend at first”. He paid back £70 for every £100 he borrowed.

He said: “When you’ve got four kids, Christmas is always a struggle. He got a bit more insistent at Christmas and made you think you had to pay him more than anyone else, more than your rent or anything else.”

Experts say families are becoming increasingly desperate as the cost-of-living crisis continues and one of the last high-interest doorstep lenders, Morses Club, goes bust.

Catherine Wohlers, part of a team which prosecutes loan sharks, said the criminal trade is becoming “increasingly sleazy”.

SuppliedExpert Catherine Wohlers says the illegal business is becoming more sleazy[/caption]

Catherine, an operations manager for the England Illegal Money Lending Team, told The Sun: “We’ve long known about these men asking for sexual favours in exchange for payment but things seem to be getting a lot more sleazy in general.

“In some cases illegal lenders are acting, in effect, like pimps. In one case a woman was told ‘If you can’t pay me I’ll send some men round when the kids are at school’.

“She would have sex with men and wouldn’t be paid by them, but her loan amount would go down. 

“In other instances men have told women ‘it would be nice if we were friends’ and encouraged them to send sexual selfies, which they later threaten to use on social media if money isn’t paid.

“It’s a way of controlling people. Where these men have power and control they will abuse it.”

Mum-of-five Annie Hawkins told The Sun how a loan shark offered to knock £50 off her debt if she performed a sex act on him.

Annie, 45, a cleaner from Birmingham, took a £200 loan from a stranger and within weeks owed four times as much.

Annie HawkinsAnnie was offered a £50 loan discount for a sex act and refused[/caption]

She said: “He came round and hinted that if I pleasured him he would give me £50 off.

“He started off flirting, then saying stuff about my body, and then insinuated I could pay off my loan faster, making a rude gesture with his hand, saying ‘you know what to do’.

“I told him I wasn’t a prostitute and might owe money but wasn’t going to sell myself. I would have rather gone homeless before I did something like that.

“It made me feel really degraded. It’s disgusting.

“These people prey on vulnerable people when they are at their lowest and double the money whenever they feel like it. 

“I’ve heard from other women who were also being harassed sexually and offered money off for sexual favours.”

Annie, who first borrowed cash to repair a car tyre, was targeted night and day by the crook, who would knock at all hours and persistently sent text messages asking if she was on track to make her payments.

As the cost-of-living crisis continues, loan sharks are also going ‘upmarket’, targeting families who earn more than a typical borrower – traditionally among the poorest fifth of the population.

England Illegal Money Lending TeamWomen are being ‘pimped out’ by sleazy loan sharks[/caption]

Research by Fair4All Finance, a financial inclusion organisation, shows that loan sharks are moving into a new market – workers who earn between £20,000 and £24,999.

Experts now fear more families will fall victim to criminal lenders after one of the last high-interest doorstep lending companies, Morses Club, went bust earlier this month.

They are also warning Brits to be wary of scam collectors who carry on taking weekly door-to-door payments from unsuspecting customers who don’t realise firms like Provident have stopped lending.

Payday companies like Wonga and QuickQuid – notorious for extortionate interest rates – also collapsed after new regulations brought in constraints.

Experts say rising inflation and banks tightening up lending is leaving some families in dire straits – with more than one million in debt to loan sharks. 

Almost 14 million Brits are expected to borrow cash for Christmas or other religious holidays over the next three months, according to research from the Money and Pensions Service.

One in ten said they would consider high-cost payday loans while one in 20 said they would turn to a pawnbroker.

Lauren Peel, director of consumer insights at Fair4All Finance, said: “When another credit provider left the market recently and their home collection agents were made redundant, some continued to lend and collect from customers. 

“Because this was the same person who had been coming to offer them a loan or taking repayments for years, many were unaware they had no protections anymore.

“Morses Club is no longer lending and this collapse comes at a particularly difficult time if people were planning to take out a loan to help during the Christmas and New Year period.

“Around 40,000 Morses customers still have outstanding loans which have not been written off and they are expected to continue to make repayments.”

Lauren implored people to try community or social lending agencies instead of turning to illegal loan sharks.

AlamyMoney lenders threaten women in their own homes[/caption]

Catherine Wohlers said the half of victims saw their loan sharks as friends before they borrowed.

She said: “We get the occasional links to organised crime, but a loan shark is most likely to be the guy down the gym, the mum at the school gates, the bloke you got talking to in the pub.

“Half of victims say they believed the lender was a mate when they took the money and didn’t even try and get money elsewhere. The person will often mention ‘double bubble’, which means paying back double the amount.

“There are often threats of violence but there’s a lot of coercive control, especially in the cases where the illegal lender was considered a friend.  

“It’s the idea of shaming someone on social media, telling your parents back home that you’re not paying your way, or informing your husband who didn’t know about the loan.

“We’ve had cases of people saying ‘well my kids aren’t going to play with yours at school anymore’; of loan sharks sending 150 text messages a day and hammering at the front door on pay day.

“A lot of our victims say they would rather take a beating than the mental torture they are subjected to.

“These people prey on vulnerability and we’ve even had pets threatened because that’s the borrower’s soft point.

“But people don’t have to suffer in silence. We arrest five or six illegal lenders each week and you can report them anonymously. 

“In extreme cases, victims and their families are even moved out of the area.”

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