Western Sky Financial Closed

What a Western Sky Financial loan cost

The Ninth Circuit found Western Sky charged APRs between 89% and 169%. That sounds almost restrained next to the 700–900% brands elsewhere on this site, and it is the most misleading comparison in tribal lending.

The difference is term length. A payday-style loan at 700% is repaid in months. Western Sky lent up to $10,000 over years, and interest at 100%-plus compounds across every one of them. New York’s Attorney General documented the result: a $1,000 loan at over 234% APR required repaying $4,942 across two years.

That is the trap.

A borrower comparing a 169% APR against a 700% one reasonably concludes they have found the cheaper option, then discovers the total is far larger — because the price of a loan is the rate multiplied by the time you are exposed to it, and Western Sky’s whole product was designed to extend the time.

Why "individually owned" decided everything

Western Sky Financial LLC was a South Dakota company with offices on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. It was owned by Martin Webb personally. As the Colorado court put it, Webb "is not a CRST official or representative of the tribe’s government," and the company was "neither owned nor operated by the Tribe."

Sovereign immunity protects a tribe and its arms — its actual businesses. It does not protect a business that a tribal member happens to own, any more than being a citizen of a country makes your company that country’s embassy. Without immunity, Western Sky faced state usury law like any other lender, and lost.

Compare Big Picture Loans, where the Lac Vieux Desert Band genuinely owns the lender: the Fourth Circuit held it IS an arm of the tribe and dismissed the case on immunity. Same argument, opposite outcome, and the only variable was whether the tribe really owned the company.

That comparison is the most useful thing an ex-borrower can understand. Every tribal lender makes the same claim; only some of them can back it up.

It died because CashCall walked away

Western Sky was not shut down by a regulator. It collapsed commercially. In the Ninth Circuit’s words: "In September 2013, CashCall discontinued its purchase of Western Sky loans; without CashCall, Western Sky ceased its operations."

The arrangement is worth understanding because it is the template. CashCall, an ordinary California lender, supplied the capital, bought every loan days after origination — before the borrower had made a single payment — took all the economic risk, and indemnified Western Sky for its legal costs. Delbert Services, which CashCall created, handled collections.

Courts concluded CashCall was the true lender, that the tribe had no substantial relationship to the transactions, and that the tribal choice-of-law clause was therefore unenforceable. CashCall’s own Indian-law expert had advised that the scheme "should work but likely won’t."

Where the money actually went

The FTC obtained a $967,740 order against Webb and Payday Financial in April 2014 — $550,000 in civil penalties plus $417,740 in disgorgement. That money went to the U.S. Treasury. Not one dollar reached a borrower. What the order did deliver was a bar on suing borrowers to collect.

The CFPB’s case against CashCall produced a $134,058,600 restitution order plus a $33.3 million penalty, affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in January 2025, with the Supreme Court declining review on 2 March 2026. It is natural to read that and expect a cheque. Do not.

Nothing has been distributed, there is no claims website, and on 8 July 2026 CashCall filed a motion to be relieved of the judgment entirely, with a hearing set for 14 September 2026.

The relief that actually reached people came from state attorneys general, one state at a time. North Carolina cancelled the loans and required credit-file correction. Massachusetts secured roughly $2.4 million in refunds and about $17 million in debt relief. Nebraska created a $950,000 restitution fund and had debts forgiven. Washington had principal balances zeroed. Georgia recovered over $40 million; Maryland $2 million; Michigan $2.2 million.

So the honest answer to "am I owed anything?" is: it depends where you lived when you borrowed. That is an unsatisfying answer, and it is the true one.