Sometimes the bad guys win one.
It happened recently at the 138th running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. I’ll Have Another (left), a strapping 3 year old colt trained in California cam barreling down the stretch to grab the lead and the victory in the $2M dollar race.
He was ridden by a 25 year old Mexican jockey, Mario Gutierrez (right), who was riding in his very first Kentucky Derby, and made the ride a winning one. I’ll have another was trained by Doug O’Neill, who also had never won the Derby before.
There is certainly nothing negative to say about the animal himself, or about jockey Gutierrez, who had been slaving away at a small Canadian racetrack until recently, and whose smile after the race looked like it was powered by the Hoover Dam.
But the owner of I’ll Have Another is a little different story. that would be J. Paul Reddam (below, center), who runs a California payday loan service that goes by the name of CashCall.
As in make a call, and get cash — at an interest rate of 184%!
Here’s a specific “deal” from Reddam’s CashCall operation: take out a $5,000 tomorrow for only a $75 loan fee. All you have to do to pay it off is pay $486.58 every month for the next 7 years!
These sort of operations suck the life out of consumers and turn them into bankruptcy debtors in short order. So I can take a pass on seeing Reddam, (who in a previous career was actually a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California) use these dirty profits to buy himself a Derby-winning racehorse, even if the horse was a comparative steal for $35,000.
By Doug Beaton