Payday Loan Provider Pays to have Supporters at Community Meeting

Wichita was the battleground this past weekend for a showdown between folks who want to see an end to payday loans, represented by the sunshiningly named Sunflower Community Action, and those who feel like everyone deserves payday loans with outrageous finance charges.

In an attempt to drum up support for payday loans in Kansas, according to a story in the Wichita Eagle, Kenneth Wayco, president of Select Management Resources, which owns LoanMax and other loan services, paid between 300 and 400 people $100 each and provided buses, a box lunch and T-shirts to attend the meeting called by Sunflower Community Action.

There?s not much folks won?t do for baloney and mustard on white bread. Throw in a hundred bucks and a free t-shirt? How could this plan go wrong?

Well, Sunflower Community Action officials told Wayco that the agenda didn?t really allow for extemporaneous public speaking by the box-lunched masses. In response, Wayco took his buses full of t-shirt clad activists and went back home. “What they want to do is draw the line between people who are deserving and those that aren’t,” he said.

“We are horrified to see that there are people out there taking advantage of people that need help,” countered Connie Gamm of Sunflower Community Action. “So we’re going to see what we could do to help.”

“We understand you were paid to get here,” Rickie Coleman, president of the Northeast Chapter of Sunflower, told Wayco?s bus crowd. “For $100, I’d wear the yellow shirts, too. Anyone willing to pay this kind of money has something to hide.”

You can read more about this story at Lender’s backers leave meeting.