Payday Lenders at Play on Caribbean Yachts

Island life has been good to David Johnson. Photos on the St. Croix resident’s Facebook page show him fishing in tournaments, partying on his boats, and chugging Fireball Whisky from the bottle. Johnson has won the island’s Christmas boat parade with a 65-foot yacht named Living the Dream, according to the event’s website. His business partner, Kirk Chewning, is also listed as a winner, with a 49-footer called Renewed Interest.

What funds this lifestyle? Payday lending—cash advances against wages that are a last resort for working people who struggle to make ends meet. Johnson and Chewning, along with a third man, Richard Clay, built a network of payday loan sites using corporations set up in Belize and the U.S. Virgin Islands that obscured their involvement and circumvented U.S. usury laws, according to four former employees of their company, Cane Bay Partners. The sites Cane Bay runs make millions of dollars a month in small loans to desperate people, charging more than 600 percent interest a year, say the ex-employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.