Part 3 — Deacon Strand At Supper
The name on the red tab was Elmer Strand. The deacon at our church for twenty years. The man who led the blessing at my Thanksgiving table and passed the cornbread with a soft smile.
The agent, Special Agent Williams of the IRS criminal investigation division, waited until I had stopped shaking. “Mr. Quinn, we know you did not know,” he said. “We have your logbooks. And we have the deacon.”
The boxes held loan contracts. Eight years of paperwork for payday loans at illegal interest rates, made to hundreds of working families across the Carolinas and Georgia. Elmer ran the lending business through a chain of small offices. My trailer carried the originals between them so no state regulator could see the whole book.
The photographs were what Elmer called “a little reminder of grace.” If a driver ever got curious, a picture of his family on the porch was meant to bring him back to the table.
The agents had been quietly watching Elmer for years. The trailer gave them every contract in one place, under a signed warrant, with a clean chain of custody from Laredo to Georgia.
Some men sit at the front of the church and still keep a second ledger in the back of the truck.
Elmer was arrested at his office on Monday morning. He pleaded guilty to operating an illegal lending scheme, wire fraud and tax evasion. The court voided every unlawful loan, ordered more than $2.6 million repaid to borrowers, and sentenced him to six years.
Hundreds of families received refunds in the mail. One woman in Charlotte wrote to the court that the check had paid her son tuition. The judge read her letter aloud at the sentencing.
Our pastor asked me to come to church the next Sunday. I almost stayed home. My wife Charlene took my arm, and we sat in the third row while the whole congregation prayed for the families affected.
The seized funds covered my back wages and retirement bonus. I put half into a scholarship fund at the church, in the names of the families who had been cheated.
At Thanksgiving, we ate with my daughter and her husband. We said our own blessing, short and sincere, and I passed the cornbread myself.
