American Web Loan Active

What an American Web Loan loan really costs

American Web Loan (AWL) lends $300–$2,500 as an installment loan over up to 12 months. Its APR is not shown upfront and reported figures conflict widely — roughly 200% at the low end to 780% at the high end — so the number in your signed agreement is the only one that matters. Borrowers routinely describe a $400–$700 loan costing $1,000–$3,600 in total.

The most distinctive complaint against AWL is the 'phantom deposit': money appearing in a borrower's bank account that they never applied for, which later generates collection demands. If that happens to you, treat it as unauthorized and dispute it in writing.

There is no prepayment penalty, so the standard escape — repay the principal fast, then revoke ACH authorization — applies here.

Where American Web Loan lends

AWL lends in roughly 45 states plus DC. Its exact exclusion list is not cleanly published; Arizona, Connecticut and Georgia are confirmed excluded, and the full set may change.

By its own terms, American Web Loan does not lend to residents of:

• Arizona
• Connecticut
• Georgia

Does American Web Loan report to credit bureaus?

AWL does not report on-time payments to Equifax, Experian or TransUnion, so repaying it will not build credit; it underwrites off alternative subprime bureaus. A default can still be sent to those bureaus or to collections.

Who actually owns and runs American Web Loan

AWL operates under the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma (Red Cedar Services / AWL Holdings), seated in Red Rock, OK. But it was founded in 2010 by a non-tribal payday operator, Mark Curry, and run through his MacFarlane Group — which handled lead generation, processing, servicing and collections.

In September 2016 the tribe formed Red Stone, Inc. to buy MacFarlane and Curry's software company; the plaintiffs in the settlement below called that restructuring an attempt to shield the operation. The Intercept reported in 2021 that Curry named a related company after a shell firm from the movie 'Wall Street.'

The Solomon settlement — and why your debt may be gone even if it was sold

In Solomon v. American Web Loan (E.D. Va. 4:17-cv-00145), a rent-a-tribe RICO class action, AWL reached a settlement with final court 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 that AWL still held as of 17 December 2020.

The most valuable term is the one most people miss. The settlement also cancelled debt AWL had already sold — including balances at Northwood Asset Management Group and roughly $218 million held by three third-party debt buyers.

That is unusual and it matters enormously: in this industry, the standard endgame is that a dead lender's balances get sold on and chased for years by someone the borrower has never heard of. Here they were extinguished in the buyers' hands.

AWL also agreed to ask Clarity Services to delete the associated credit reporting, so the loans should not be sitting on your specialty-bureau file either.

So if a collector contacts you about an American Web Loan or Clear Creek Lending balance from the class period, the correct response is not to negotiate. It is to tell them the debt was cancelled in Solomon and to demand written validation and proof of ownership. The settlement administrator's site is no longer operating, so keep your own records.

A judge found this was not really a tribal business

The Otoe-Missouria Tribe's name was on American Web Loan, but a judge found that Mark Curry never actually transferred ownership and continued to control the operation.

That finding is the difference between the two halves of this industry. Where a tribe genuinely owns the lender — as the Lac Vieux Desert Band does with Big Picture Loans — sovereign immunity has held up on appeal.

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