Predatory Loan King Backs Schimel

Brad Schimel. Photo from the State of Wisconsin.

State Attorney General Brad Schimel accepted a $2,500 campaign donation from a predatory loan king who was in business with a reputed mob figure, records show.

Schimel accepted the donation from Rod Aycox, of Alpharetta, GA, on March 15, campaign finance records show. The donation is listed in Schimel’s latest campaign finance report.

Aycox is the founder and chief executive officer of Atlanta-based Select Management Resources and routinely pumps big money into campaigns of candidates symapthetic to the exhorbitant-interest payday/title loan industry. Aycox also operates companies under the names LoanMax, Midwest Title Loans and several other brands, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

The profits he derives from charging high interest rates to poor people allows him to live in luxury.

Aycox, a former used car and insurance salesman, was at one time a co-owner with Alvin Malnik of Title Loans of America. Malnik is a reputed mob associate.

As the Los Angeles Times put it:

If you believe Forbes magazine (“The Invisible Enterprise”), Malnik essentially invented the black art of money-laundering, taking mob money and routing it to legitimate ventures (like real estate). To wit:

“In the 1960s, Miami lawyer Alvin Malnik set up the Bank of Commerce in the Bahamas. Mob money flowed into its secret numbered accounts by the hundreds of millions–(mob financier Meyer) Lansky money, most of it–and then out again into Tibor Rosenbaum’s International Credit Bank of Switzerland before returning to the United States for investment.”

By the way, did you know that Swiss francs were used to finance construction of the apartment buildings in Clairemont and Rancho Penasquitos.

The gaming commissions of New Jersey and Las Vegas have made Malnik persona non grata . All lies, he says.

And the Arizona Republic reported in 1999:

In a January 1997 sworn deposition for a Georgia civil action, Aycox, then president and part-owner of Title Loans of America, revealed Malnik as an owner of U.S. Title Trust, which owns 50 percent of Title Loans of America. In the same deposition, Aycox reported that he is a 33 percent owner and Kenneth Partiss of Atlanta was a 17 percent owner. In 1983 Partiss was among 84 defendants indicted in Miami after a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration drug-smuggling probe that covered 20 states. He was acquitted.

Gretchen Schuldt writes a blog for Wisconsin Justice Initiative, whose mission is “To improve the quality of justice in Wisconsin by educating the public about legal issues and encouraging civic engagement in and debate about the judicial system and its operation.