"Predatory" Payday Lenders Ripped Apart by Satirical Website PredatoryLendingAssociation.com

Former Microsoft executive and high tech entrepreneur Mike Mathieu announced on Tuesday that Front Seat Management, LLC, his Seattle-based organization, has produced a satirical website to rip up predatory lenders and educate the public about their wicked ways in the practice of payday loan lending.

According to the ruthlessly satirical website's home page, "The Predatory Lending Association (PLA) is dedicated to extracting maximum profit from the working poor by increasing payday loan fees and debt traps. The working poor are an exciting, fast-growing demographic."

However, the website is based in serious factuality, and has been put together by researching data from the Center for Responsible Lending and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Using parody in an "Onionesque" way, the website uncovers industry lobbying and business practices, including a military base finder to target active duty military and a proprietary "PoorFinder" to target poor people using Google Maps.

In addition, the website features a suite of interactive racial profiling tools and a comparison of payday lending and indentured servitude.

"This wickedly funny and dead-on critique of the payday loan industry is the most sophisticated use of technology and satire that I've seen," testifies Elizabeth Warren, who is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School as well as a recognized expert on issues in the pay day lending industry.

"Pay day lenders profit by turning people's short-term financial pains into long-term financial pains," Mathieu said.

Consumer Federation of America director Jean Ann Fox has described payday lending as a transfer of wealth from the poor to the predatory and powerful, whom she equates with the "salary buyers" and "loan sharks" that became prominent in the United States in the 20th century.