HOUSTON — The offers seem too good to pass up: Loans worth tens of thousands of dollars with no money down and no time limit for paying it back. The main catch, sometimes buried in the fine print, is the interest rate of 40 percent or higher.
“We take the weight off your shoulders,” reads one pitch, while another urges borrowers to “accelerate your award.”
Yet the recipients are a very specific and, some worry, vulnerable group: short-of-cash former N.F.L. players with cognitive impairment from years of collisions on the field.
The lenders are targeting this group because the former players stand to receive as much as $5 million each in a landmark legal settlement with the N.