Provident Personal Credit Loans Ltd

Jailed for fraud and theft

A now former employee of a Letterkenny based money lending company was jailed for a year after he pleaded guilty to 19 counts of theft and fraud from them at Letterkenny Circuit Court.

Seamus O’Hanlon of 25 Lonsdale, Ballybofey pleaded guilty to all charges that occurred between 2005 and 2006.

The company he stole from, Provident Personal Credit Ltd. on Pearse Road, Letterkenny believe the defendant illegally took €56,000, but he claimed it was more in the region of €33,000.

He pleaded guilty to one charge last July. On Friday he pleaded guilty to nine charges of the theft of cash totalling almost €8,000 and nine charges of using company loan application forms to create a false instrument used to defraud the firm.

Detective Garda Adrian Lyons told the court he received a complaint from Mr. John Glen of Provident Personal Credit that €56,000 had been taken from the company who specialised in providing small cash loans for people who may not qualify for loans from other lending institutions.

He said Mr. Glen’s routine check found discrepancies with nine customer accounts including some that had made repayments but were never credited and others that indicated they had received loans when they had not.

On November 7, 2006, O’Hanlon was interviewed at Ballybofey Garda Station and he admitted misappropriating up to €33,000.

In a statement he said he had worked for the company for two and half years, initially as a canvasser for new customers but after he established a large client base he was made an agent for the business and allowed to handle cash accounts.

O’Hanlon said he earned up to €900 a week with a client base of 260 clients with loans ranging from €100 to €1,000.

On a weekly basis he would have up to €10,000 passing though his hands for the firm.

He told Gardai he had a history of gambling since his early twentis and this resurfaced when he was handling large amounts of cash.

Provident Personal Credit History | Credit Repair Leak

Provident Personal Credit Ltd is a monetary services company selling loans in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, a supplementary of Provident Financial. Provident Personal Credit headquarters are in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and there are local Provident Personal Credit offices located in most towns and cities all through the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

Provident Personal Credit was founded in Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1880 by Joshua Kelley Waddilove in which the initial goal is to help working class families purchase the essentials that they needed. His form of credit rapidly became popular and over time Joshua died in 1920 his company, then called Provident Clothing and Supply Co, had developed into a nationwide business with 5000 Agents. Provident Personal Credit is part of Provident Financial. Provident Financial are the subprime loans market best and, as a whole, they have 11,500 self employed Agents which serves over 1.8 million customers. The company has a good status with 95% of their customers saying that they are satisfied with their service. ‘Certainly, Provident has remained the market leader since they give high degrees of customer satisfaction, a personal and flexible service and no penalties for lost the occasional payment’. 71% of Provident Personal Credit Agents are women; these Agents are at the heart of the home credit service because they are the ones who gather the weekly repayments from customers.