Democratic lawmakers said Monday that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s history as the chief executive of DFC Global inextricably ties him to the “unscrupulous, illegitimate practices” of a payday lending industry now barred from doing business in Connecticut.
payday loans
Posted inPolitics
A campaign gets personal: ‘He’s telling lies about my wife’
Connecticut’s gubernatorial ad wars got personal Tuesday as Democrat Ned Lamont asked Republican Bob Stefanowski to stop airing a television commercial that Lamont says falsely implicates his wife, venture capitalist Annie Lamont, in profiting from a British payday lender, Wonga.
Posted inPolitics
Stefanowski, Lamont take liberties in payday loan allegations
Republican Bob Stefanowski ran a payday lending company. The venture capital firm that employs Democrat Ned Lamont’s wife as managing director invested in one. Both are facts featured in misleading television ads in Connecticut’s gubernatorial campaign.
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Stefanowski’s last employer is barred here. Does it matter?
Bob Stefanowski made sweeping changes while running a scandal-ridden payday lending company, his last job before running for governor of Connecticut. Now, voters have to decide how impressed they should be about Stefanowski’s role as a change agent for a company whose products, even the ones improved on his watch, are still illegal in the state he wishes to lead.
Posted inPolitics
A GOP turnaround exec’s turn as a Democrat goes unexplained
Britain’s Sky News emphasized the plummier aspects of Bob Stefanowski’s resume — trustee of London’s venerable Victoria and Albert Museum, visiting professor at Oxford, “top investment banker” — in reporting his arrival in late 2014 as the new boss of a decidedly down-market business: Making payday loans in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe. Stefanowski, a GOP candidate for governor, is happy to talk about his time in the payday loan business. His briefer tenure as a Democrat? Not so much.
Posted inPolitics
CT House passes online financial protections
The state House of Representatives unanimously approved legislation Wednesday that would broaden consumer protections against on-line financial threats ranging from payday loans to identity theft.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Tribal lenders claim right to charge 448% on loans in CT
An Oklahoma tribe and its allies are fighting a legal, advertising and social-media war in Connecticut, claiming a right as a sovereign government to make unlicensed short-term loans at astronomical interest rates in defiance of state usury laws.