I can't find it now but about 6 mths to 1 year ago there was an article in either NYT or WSJ about NY people (including many women) that were making high interest illegal loans to poor folks-mostly minority in the Bronx, Manhattan. Technically they were loan sharks though most of them did not have the sort of threat capacity/ruthlessness that we normally associate with loan sharks.

Their clientele was mostly other poor people like themselves. These were people that could not get a bank loan and were mostly unable to get payday loans. Also these are folks whose social networks wouldn't overlap with those of traditional OC loan sharks.

Usually there weren't implied threats of violence about late payment or lack of payment-being tossed out of the network and/or prevented from borrowing again was a big enough incentive to honor debts. The amounts discussed were very small but as most of these people were at the extreme low end of the working poor (or the non-working poor) the amounts could make a big difference in their lives.