February 27, 2019
By Email: 2019-NPRM-PaydayReconsideration@cfpb.gov
Comment Intake
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
1700 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20552
Re:

Docket No. CFPB-2019-0006/RIN 3170-AA80

Dear Sir or Madam:
Campaign for Accountability (“CfA”), a nonprofit government watchdog organization, is
writing to comment on the recently proposed rule concerning Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain
High-Cost Installment Loans.1 CfA has conducted several investigations into the payday lending
industry, and our research has uncovered many examples of the industry’s efforts to influence
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) through deceptive tactics. In light of the
CFPB’s proposed rule, which would dramatically benefit payday lending companies, CfA is
submitting this comment to inform the CFPB about the industry’s hidden maneuvers.
Investigations
On November 2, 2015, CfA released a report, Academic Deception, which documented
the relationship between a payday lending lawyer, Hilary Miller, the chairman of the Consumer
Credit Research Foundation (“CCRF”), a nonprofit group funded by the payday lending industry,
and a professor at Arkansas Tech University, Marc Anthony Fusaro. 2 Mr. Miller is CCRF paid
Dr. Fusaro nearly $40,000 to write a study defending the payday lending industry. 3
In 2011, Dr. Fusaro and Patricia J. Cirillo, President of Cypress Research, published a
paper entitled, Do Payday Loans Trap Consumers in a Cycle of Debt? 4 The paper concluded,
unsurprisingly, that payday loans are not responsible for a debt cycle. 5 CfA’s investigation
uncovered emails showing Mr. Miller reviewed and edited drafts of the study. 6 He directed Dr.
1

Press Release, Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans, Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau, February 6, 2019, available at https://www.consumerfinance.gov/policy-compliance/notice-opportunitiescomment/open-notices/payday-vehicle-title-and-certain-high-cost-installment-loans/.
2
Stephen J. Dubner, Are Payday Loans really as Evil as People Say, Freakonomics, April 6, 2016, available at
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/payday-loans/; Academic Deception, Campaign for Accountability, November 2,
2015, available at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2930174/288230891-Academic-Deception.pdf.
3
Academic Deception, Nov. 2, 2015.
4
Marc Anthony Fusaro and Patricia J Cirillo, Do Payday Loans Trap Consumers in a Cycle of Debt?, SSRN,
November 16, 2011, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1960776.
5
Id.
6
Academic Deception, Nov. 2, 2015.

611 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E. #337  Washington, D.C. 20003  (202) 780-5750
campaignforaccountability.org

 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
February 27, 2019
Page 2
Fusaro to remove negative information about payday lenders, and instructed him to delete any
acknowledgment of Mr. Miller’s role in producing the report. The complete report documenting
Mr. Miller’s role in drafting the paper with Dr. Fusaro and Dr. Cirillo can be found here:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2930174-288230891-Academic-Deception.html.
More recently, on February 25, 2019, CfA released another report, Academic for Hire,
revealing Mr. Miller’s relationship with a different academic, Jennifer Lewis Priestley, a
professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.7 In 2014, Dr. Priestley published a paper
entitled Payday Loan Rollovers and Consumer Welfare, the premise of which is that payday
loans are beneficial for consumers.8
Emails between Mr. Miller and Dr. Priestley, which CfA obtained through an open
records request, reveal that Mr. Miller funded, designed, and edited Dr. Priestley’s paper. 9 The
emails show, for instance, that Mr. Miller rewrote entire drafts of Dr. Priestley’s paper without
tracking his changes. He repeatedly implored her to add references to other papers he had funded
and solicited comments from CCRF-funded academics to refine her work. In response to one of
Mr. Miller’s suggested edits, Dr. Priestley wrote, “I am here to serve.” 10
After Mr. Miller was satisfied with Dr. Priestley’s paper, she published it and the payday
lending industry began relying on it to lobby the CFPB to defeat the agency’s regulations
concerning payday loans. On July 24, 2014, Joi Sheffield, a lobbyist for the Community
Financial Services Association of America (“CFSA”), a payday lending trade association,
delivered Dr. Priestley’s study to David Silberman, the Associate Director for Research,
Markets, and Regulation at the CFPB. 11 Ms. Sheffield urged Mr. Silberman to “dig deeper into
this area.”12 The complete report documenting Mr. Miller’s role in drafting Dr. Priestley’s paper
can be found here: https://campaignforaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CfAReport-Payday-Loans-Miller-Priestley-2-25-19.pdf.
Ms. Sheffield, the payday lending lobbyist, appears to have violated lobbying disclosure
laws when she delivered the paper to the CFPB, failing to include her contacts with the CFPB on
behalf of CFSA on her lobbying disclosure forms. 13 Additionally, CFSA never disclosed that it

7

Academic for Hire, Campaign for Accountability, February 25, 2019, available at
https://campaignforaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CfA-Report-Payday-Loans-Miller-Priestley-225-19.pdf.
8
Jennifer Lewis Priestley, Payday Loan Rollovers and Consumer Welfare, SSRN, December 5, 2014, available at
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5686189-Priestley-Miller-Payday-Loan-Rollvers-and.html.
9
Academic for Hire, Feb. 25, 2019.
10
Id., Exhibit I.
11
Id., Exhibit SS.
12
Id.
13
Sheffield Brothers, 2011-2018 Lobbying Disclosure Reports on behalf of Community Financial Services
Association of America, Secretary of the Senate, Office of Public Records, accessed at
https://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=selectFields&reset=1.

 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
February 27, 2019
Page 3
had lobbied the CFPB although Politico reported “CFSA officials met at least three times with
CFPB Director Richard Cordray” between 2012 and 2015, according to his public calendars. 14
On February 25, 2019, CfA filed a complaint with the Secretary of the Senate and the
Clerk of the House of Representatives seeking an investigation into whether CFSA and Ms.
Sheffield violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act. 15 CfA’s complaint can be found here:
https://campaignforaccountability.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CfA-LDA-ComplaintPayday-2-25-19.pdf.
Conclusion
CfA’s investigations of payday lenders have uncovered evidence that representatives of
the payday lending industry have bought and paid for seemingly unbiased academic studies to
defend their business model and lobby against regulations to protect consumers from payday
lending companies. As the CPFB finalizes this rule, the agency should ensure it has not been
hoodwinked into relying on what in the end is no more than the payday lending industry’s
promotional materials in crafting important consumer protections..
Sincerely,

Daniel E. Stevens
Executive Director

14

Community Financial Services Association of America, 2012-2018 Lobbying Disclosure Reports, Secretary of the
Senate, Office of Public Records, accessed at https://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=selectFields&reset=1;
Anna Palmer, Emails Reveal Consumer Protection Agency’s Cozy Ties, Politico, November 19, 2015, available at
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/payday-loans-consumer-financial-protection-ties-215797.
15
Letter from Daniel Stevens to Julie E. Adams, Secretary of the Senate, and Karen L. Haas, Clerk of the U.S.
House of Representatives, February 15, 2019, available at https://campaignforaccountability.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/02/CfA-LDA-Complaint-Payday-2-25-19.pdf.