The high flying, fast living, live on the edge lifestyle of racing attracts a certain type of person and over the years these “certain types of people” have (on occasion) proven themselves to be willing to do things that ran counter to the law to feed their passion. One need not look all that far back to remember Evan Knoll and the crimes he committed (which he is serving Federal time for) and one need not look past the headlines of the newspapers this week to see the latest name that has hit the front page for the wrong reasons. This time it is Scott Tucker who may be known by BangShifters as the owner of Level 5 racing which (until this point) was a team that competed globally and at a very high level in the world of road racing. With roughly $67-million of Tucker’s dollars funding it, you can understand that this was no struggling outfit, but there was one big problem. Those weren’t Scott Tucker’s dollars.

The government’s case against Tucker (and others) claims that he was running a payday lending operation that violated several laws regarding money lending including scheming to collect unlawful debts, conspiracy, understandment of interest rates and more. Multiple news reports have said that customers which used the loan service that Tucker was involved with were often charged more than 700% interest. The government also accused Tucker of making several sham business deals to cover the fact that he owned the company. It was setup to look like the organization was owned by Native American tribes which were operating off of their sovereign lands in places like Oklahoma. The government also claims that Tucker made hundreds of millions of dollars from the business. Overall the government is looking for $1.32 billion dollars  and claims the company made over $2 billion in revenue between 2003 and 2012.

We can’t say that we’re international road racing fans outside of a couple events a year but this is an incredible story that has alleged levels of greed, avarice, and just plain chicanery that even took us aback. The story is worth reading and we have linked to it below. The least of Scott Tucker’s worries now surround his race cars.

Here’s the full story on the Scott Tucker indictment