Ten Words from Today's NY Times - June 6, 2012

Mr. Libi’s death would be another dramatic moment for an American covert war in Pakistan that has been particularly active over the past year, starting with the death of the group’s founder, Osama bin Laden, in May 2011 and followed up by drone strikes against several senior lieutenants, including Atiyah Abd al-Rahman.

But that very success could, paradoxically, signal a shifting target: as Al Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal belt has been cornered or killed, new efforts to attack Western targets have been mounted by the group’s affiliates in Yemen and Somalia.

An Islamic scholar by training, he used frequent video appearances to expound on world events, chastise critics and boast about his escape from an American military prison in Afghanistan in 2005.

“One repercussion of the crisis is that people are harder to find,” Mr. Maitos, an imposing, burly man, said last week in his sweltering office on the edge of Athens.

But in what probably rates as one of the more unorthodox career moves for a philosophy professor, Reddam, in the mid-1990s, started a mortgage lending business and later entered a field with its own brutal logic and dubious ethics: high-risk, high-interest loans for people who needed cash fast to settle bills, pay for home repairs or take a vacation.

A year later, he left the company on the day that three of Ditech’s managers were indicted on a charge of trying to extort kickbacks from a real estate firm.

Maryland and West Virginia have accused CashCall of violating state laws that cap interest rates by using out-of-state banks to originate the loans then quickly purchasing the loans.

Maryland has proposed a fine of $5.7 million, which is pending, and in a separate action, revoked CashCall’s mortgage lending license.

If Reddam is perturbed by the regulators’ pursuit of his company, it is not evident.

He said last week the accusations were dated or based on misunderstandings, and that certain problems with the company had been rectified.