'Joan the Loan', 78, avoids prison sentence for illegal money lending

A 78-year-old grandmother known as "Joan the Loan" was told she was too old to go to jail after she was convicted of illegal money lending. Joan Fionda, a widow who walks with a stick, was not quite the cuddly granny she appeared. The court heard that she lent tens of thousands of pounds at exorbitant interest rates to people so desperate they had nowhere else to go.

In return she would demand pre-signed blank cheques or access to their bank accounts or benefit payments. One couple were forced to sell their flat in order to pay back the inflated amount they owed her.

The court heard that Fionda would be accompanied by “enforcers” and had a team of three or four women helping run her money-lending operations. Staff at the post office in Horfield, Bristol, nicknamed them “the Mafia” because were always withdrawing cash using other people’s pass books.


Photo from here.

When police raised Fionda’s home in January this year they found £6,000 in cash. Yesterday she pleaded guilty to four offences of money lending without a licence totalling £33,500.

The judge at Bristol Crown Court described Fionda as a ”loan shark” and sentenced her to a 12-month community and supervision order. Judge Nigel Davis said: ”This is basically loan sharking. This is a cottage industry where you lent quite considerable sums at quite a considerable rate of interest.

“I find it very difficult to know what to do with you. There is no way I am going to send you at this stage of your life to prison. But at the same time I don’t want you to think what you were doing was okay. On occasions you were charging quite a lot of money. You were lending to people who are often very vulnerable and unable to pay you back. You didn’t do it out of the goodness of your heart. They trusted you.”