Think Finance Settlement: 17-State CFPB Relief and Void Loans

The Think Finance settlement is a group of related court settlements and a federal enforcement payout that together delivered close to $1 billion in cash refunds and canceled debt to more than a million borrowers who took out online loans from Plain Green, Great Plains Lending, or MobiLoans. If you had one of those loans, you likely qualified automatically, without filing a claim form, and any negative credit reporting tied to the loan was ordered removed.¹

Which Loans Qualify

The debt cancellation piece of the settlement covers three specific tribal lending brands, with cutoff dates that matter:

All Great Plains Lending loans.
Plain Green loans issued before June 1, 2016.
MobiLoans advances issued before May 6, 2017.

Roughly 920,772 loans were deleted from the tribal lenders’ books under the bankruptcy settlement alone, and negative credit reporting entries connected to those loans were ordered removed from borrowers’ credit files.¹

Loans from other lenders are not covered. The three Think Finance-branded consumer products that moved to Elevate Credit in a 2014 spinoff — RISE, Elastic, and Sunny — are separate brands with their own history, and the borrower relief described here is tied to the Plain Green, Great Plains Lending, and MobiLoans book.²

How Payments Reach Borrowers

Class counsel confirmed that benefits from the private class action settlements were distributed automatically to eligible borrowers, meaning class members did not need to submit claim forms to receive their share.¹

A separate federal payout, run by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, began on May 14, 2024. The CFPB started distributing $384,009,580.74 from its Civil Penalty Fund to 191,672 consumers who had made payments on Plain Green, Great Plains Lending, or MobiLoans loans they did not legally owe. Epiq Systems is administering the distribution.³

If you believe you qualify and want to check on a payment from the CFPB fund, the administrator can be reached at 1-888-557-1865, by email at info@cfpb-thinkfinance.org, or by mail at CFPB v. Think Finance, LLC, P.O. Box 5290, Portland, OR 97208-5290.³

What the Total Relief Looks Like

The dollars come from several separate cases that were resolved on different timelines but describe the same underlying lending business.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Think Finance, filed October 23, 2017 in the Northern District of Texas, produced $55.75 million in cash plus $380.7 million in debt cancellation.¹ A series of private class actions filed in the Eastern District of Virginia went after the investors and executives behind Think Finance. In Gibbs v. TCV V, L.P., the venture firm Technology Crossover Ventures paid $50.05 million alongside about $383 million in additional debt cancellation. Other Virginia cases produced a combined $12.35 million, and on August 17, 2022 Judge M. Hannah Lauck granted final approval to the last of the tranches, which included a $44.53 million settlement involving Mike Stinson and Elevate Credit.⁴ A separate $33 million Elevate Credit settlement received final approval from a Virginia federal judge in August 2026.⁵

Class counsel put the combined private-settlement total at roughly $155 million in cash and more than $760 million in canceled consumer debt, or about $1 billion in relief, and described it as the largest collective settlement ever obtained against the online tribal lending industry.⁴ The CFPB’s $384 million distribution is on top of that.⁶ Think Finance itself went out of business as a result of the litigation, as did at least one of the tribal lending fronts.¹

Why These Loans Were Void

Think Finance, LLC was a Fort Worth, Texas company that built the technology, analytics, marketing, and underwriting behind the loans, but did not lend directly. It partnered with three tribes, and the loans were issued under the tribes’ names: Plain Green (Chippewa Cree Tribe of Montana), Great Plains Lending (Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma), and MobiLoans (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana).⁷

Regulators called the arrangement a rent-a-tribe scheme. The tribes formally owned the entities, but Think Finance built and ran the lending business, and the structure was designed to use tribal sovereign immunity to bypass state usury and licensing laws. Borrowers were offered installment loans and lines of credit with annual rates from 60% to over 300%, which regulators later argued were void from the start in states that capped rates or required lender licensing.³

The 17-State CFPB Distribution

The CFPB sued Think Finance in November 2017 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, alleging the company engaged in unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts by collecting on loans that were void under the laws of 17 states: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota.⁷

A final consent order was entered on February 6, 2020. It permanently barred the Think Finance entities from offering or collecting on loans in those 17 states when the loans violated state lending laws. The monetary penalty in the order itself was nominal: $1 per entity, or $7 total. The larger $384 million refund to borrowers came four years later, out of the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund rather than out of Think Finance directly.⁷

If you made payments on a Plain Green, Great Plains Lending, or MobiLoans loan while living in one of those 17 states, you fell within the population the CFPB identified for the 2024 distribution.³

Pennsylvania Borrowers

Pennsylvania ran its own enforcement track, originally filed in November 2014 by then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane. Pennsylvania caps unsecured consumer loans under $50,000 at 6% annual interest and does not allow payday lending, so the state’s complaint reached Think Finance, its subsidiaries, CEO Kenneth Rees, and Elevate Credit under state corrupt organizations and consumer protection laws.⁸

A settlement and consent decree was filed on April 8, 2021. Kenneth Rees personally agreed to pay $3 million to the Commonwealth and accepted a nine-year ban on providing capital to, working for, or servicing any entity that makes unsecured consumer loans to Pennsylvania residents unless the products comply with state law. The settlement stated it was not an admission of wrongdoing.⁹

If You Think You Are Owed Money

Start with the CFPB distribution if you had a Plain Green, Great Plains Lending, or MobiLoans loan and lived in one of the 17 states listed above. Contact Epiq Systems at 1-888-557-1865 or info@cfpb-thinkfinance.org to check on your payment status.³

For debt cancellation and credit reporting cleanup, no claim was required: benefits from the private class settlements were distributed automatically to eligible borrowers, and the courts ordered negative entries tied to the covered loans removed from credit files. If a covered loan still shows on your credit report, that is grounds to dispute it with the reporting bureaus.¹

1
Tycko & Zavareei LLP. Final Approval Think Finance Payday Borrowers Settlements
2
Fort Worth Business Press. Think Finance Restructures, Spins Off Elevate
3
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Will Distribute More Than $384 Million to Consumers Deceived by Think Finance
4
Tycko & Zavareei LLP. Final Approval Granted in Last of Think Finance Settlements
5
American Banker. How It All Unraveled for One Online Tribal Lender
6
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Payments to Harmed Consumers – Think Finance
7
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Enforcement Action – Think Finance, LLC
8
Classaction.org. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v Think Finance Et Al
9
Office of Attorney General of Pennsylvania. Think Finance Settlement and Consent Decree