My brother and his best friend referred a lady who is their friend to me and my mother. Their friend is a cousin of his best friend's ex-girlfriend, whom I know for a long time too. Their friend was looking for a financer for her lending business in their office. She told us that she used to be a collector of his supervisor and her supervisor resigned and sees a very good opportunity to pick up the business. She told us that they charge a 20% interest and that there's a lot of people who wants to file for a loan but she can only accommodate a few due to insufficient capital to accommodate all. It seems to be a good investment so my mom filed for a 10k loan to the Cooperative she's a member to and hop in and gave it to this lady.
I got a little encouraged as our money can earn 15% interest and she guarantees she only lend money to those employees that are already regular and lends no more than 2k per person to make it light on their payment and avoid loss. I had my husband meet with her and we also gave 10k. Before giving her the money, we agreed that we can pull off our money any time but we have to give her 2 weeks notice as she is also collecting it from the people who owes her.
A few weeks after, she is asking us again if we might want to add more as the demand is increasing too. My mom gave another 10k. After a couple of months, my mom needed to get 5k, but the lady couldn't give her the money tho it's a 6 weeks notice. My mom and I doubted her because of that and so we decided to get all of our money back including the agreed interest. It's been 5 months since my mom asked her to give her money back and as for me, it's been 3 months since I told her I would like my money back too. She always gives us a date when she'll return some of the amount but when the day comes, she ends up no show and no answer to text and calls. A day after the promised date, she would answer our call and give us different reasons why she couldn't give us the money. We're trying our best to understand her since we trust the people who referred her so much and not one to the people who referred her thought that she'll be this way. 3-5 months is too long and we're having some financial struggles as well and she keeps doing it to us every time.
I didn't had any written agreement with her but I do have proofs on texts and on our private messages on chat. She affirms about the interest and she also sent me a screen shot of her computation when I asked her for it mid June. My mom holds a written agreement but doesn't indicate the interest on the written agreement but also holds an evidence regarding interests.
I contacted her cousin at the time that she became unresponsive again to ask if her parents know about this and if she knows what's happening to her cousin. The cousin tried to call this lady but she couldn't reach so she reached out to this lady's mother. She was told that there are 10 people that she lends the money with who are not yet regular who went AWOL and ran with the money they borrowed from her. They called my mom and asked her if she can just wave off the interest and she'll just pay the principal. My mom couldn't agree to it as she just borrowed it from COOP and went over due because she was unable to pay. She told her tho to just settle the principal balance and give her 5k as interest so she can pay off her loan, be even and get the stress off. It's a compounded interest so I think it's a pretty good deal but she just keeps giving us a promised date that she never commits. What would be the best move to do to get our money back and the promised interest? We are willing to come down on the interest but not completely take it off as we had a lot of problems and took a lot of our time specially whenever she promised to pay. Our jobs had been affected too as we had to wait for her and she just don't show up.
Also, I heard that there's some kind of a law where in nobody should charge a 20% interest. My husband says we're not loan sharks as we're just investors and the lady whom we entrusted our money with is the one considered as loan shark. What is your input about this? Do we held liable to anything or to anybody?