Clear Creek Lending Closed

What a Clear Creek Lending loan cost

Clear Creek was a dba rather than a distinct lender, so its economics were American Web Loan’s. What is worth measuring here is not a rate but the size of the hole: $100.5 million in loans AWL was still holding, plus roughly $218 million already sold to debt buyers, plus balances at Northwood Asset Management.

Look at that ratio. More than twice as much debt had been sold on as the lender still held. That is the industry’s actual business model made visible — originate, collect what you can, then sell the wreckage to someone whose entire job is pursuing people who have already demonstrated they cannot pay.

The settlement cancelled both halves, which is why it stands out. $86 million in cash went out on top.

Why the debt-buyer term matters more than the cash

Solomon v. American Web Loan (E.D. Va. 4:17-cv-00145) received final approval on 9 July 2021, covering roughly 600,000 borrowers. It paid $86 million in cash and cancelled $100.5 million of class-period loans AWL held as of 17 December 2020.

Then it went further. It also cancelled debt AWL had already sold — balances at Northwood Asset Management Group and roughly $218 million held by three third-party debt buyers.

That is rare, and it is the difference between relief that ends the problem and relief that relocates it. A settlement that only cancels what the lender still holds leaves every sold-on balance untouched, and those are precisely the debts that follow people for years. Here they were extinguished in the buyers’ hands.

Compare Castle Payday, which achieved the same outcome by a different route: its settlement barred the defendants from selling charged-off balances in the first place. Two mechanisms, one result — and both are worth citing if a collector ever contacts you about a loan from either operation.

The tribe’s name, and who actually owned it

American Web Loan traded under the Otoe-Missouria Tribe, and Clear Creek Lending was one of its dbas. But a judge found that Mark Curry never actually transferred ownership to the tribe and continued to control the operation.

That finding puts AWL on one side of the line that divides this whole industry. Where a tribe genuinely owns the lender — as the Lac Vieux Desert Band owns Big Picture Loans — sovereign immunity has held up on appeal, and the borrowers lose.

Where the tribal wrapper is an arrangement rather than ownership, as here and as with Western Sky, it collapses.

It is the same test every time, and it turns on one question: did the tribe really own the company, or did someone pay for the use of its name?