Consumer fraud is targeted

Beth Slovic

Monday, July 12, 2004 | 8:23 a.m.

Consumer fraud runs the gamut from the manufacturing and sale of counterfeit handbags to predatory lending to identity theft, and investigators in Las Vegas and across the country are doing their best to combat it.

This week about 90 members of the North American Consumer Protection Investigators organization are joining representatives from the Nevada Consumer Affairs Division at a symposium at the Riviera hotel-casino organized around the theme of fighting fraud.

The conference began Sunday and runs through Wednesday and was designed to inform industry professionals about consumer protection.

Patricia Morse Jarman, the state commissioner for consumer affairs, said teaching residents to protect themselves was also an important goal for her office. She hoped all participants would get a leg up in their efforts to do just that.

Assembly woman Barbara Buckley will address the group Tuesday on the topic of some pay-day lenders' illegal practices. Buckley said some lenders in the area have been defrauding consumers by charging them more than the business owners advertised. Then they try to skirt the law by avoiding regulators.

Unlike some states, Nevada has no statute on the books that limits the interest rates on rapid loans, which can sometimes reach as high as 900 percent, Buckley said.

But a federal "truth in lending" act does require that all lenders tell customers what the interest rate is before they do business.

Still, a number of lenders in Las Vegas are ignoring the law and squeezing people for significant additional chunks of money when payments are late, Buckley said.

"Some of the worst abuses come on the collection side," Buckley said. "Consumers go to one lender to pay off the first one and then they're on the debt treadmill."

A new trend in Southern Nevada and elsewhere is Internet lenders. They may be the worst kind, Buckley said.

"When you go to complain to the Internet loaners, they're gone," she said.

The symposium will also address the issue of counterfeit merchandise in a session called "The Name Doesn't Make it Real."

One topic of particular interest to Jarman, is identity theft, a problem that recently has become widespread in Nevada, she said.

"I'm really tuned into the identity theft right now," Jarman said. "Someone with bad intentions and a little time can do a lot of damage."