Can you be arrested for not paying payday loans?

Answer 1

No, one cannot be arrested for non-payment of ANY loan, however, the borrower may be sued by the lender in civil court in order to recover what was owed.

Always remember that it is a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) for a collection agency to threaten you with arrest, whether by first-party (the company servicing the debt) or third-party collectors. Read up on the FDCPA, start recording your phone calls (obtain permission if your state requires permission), transcribe and/or summarize calls that could not be recorded and contact a lawyer (to stop the harassment and potentially to initiate proceedings that may result in your receiving up to $1K per violation).

In some cases, generally with larger debts than those provided by payday lenders, one may be arrested for the following reasons:

* A bench warrant is issued by the judge as a result of either not showing up to trial or non-compliance with an earlier civil judgment. In this case, the warrant is merely a tool for the judge to get the borrower in front of them and almost never results in jail (the warrant gets you arrested, but the trial is still civil, not criminal)

* The judge interprets the failure to pay as paperhanging attempt (a type of check fraud where a person purposely writes a check on a closed or empty account) and forward the judgment to a prosecutor. In this case, the action of not paying the payday loan was the CAUSE for charging the borrower in criminal court (again, the arrest would be due to the criminal charge, not the civil one)

* A history of non-payment that leads to a criminal charge of fraud. In this case, the individual is being arrested for a repeated pattern of fraud (not necessarily the non payment of any SPECIFIC loan)