The tribe’s misadventures with payday lending have their roots in Utah, where two businessmen – Chad Jardine, a former marketing executive, and Blake Collins, an Internet entrepreneur – set up an online lending company called Flobridge in 2009. State regulators soon began to notice their success. In December 2010, the state of Idaho issued a cease-and-desist order to one of their lending websites. The order stated that the company had issued payday loans without a state license and illegally attempted to garnish the wages of two customers who didn’t pay back their loans on time. (Jardine and Collins did not respond to requests for comment.)

By then, Jardine and Collins had incorporated a new company, Cash Cloud, in Arizona. It was only a matter of time before new cease-and-desist orders began arriving from other states that regulate payday lending. But Jardine and Collins could continue doing business if they found a sovereign native tribe to serve as their legal shield: The principle of tribal sovereignty offers immunity from the enforcement of state laws. Lending businesses affiliated with tribes are able to operate even in states that cap interest rates on payday loans.

If a payday company has a legal affiliation with a tribe, “there’s really nothing we can do” to stop them in court, explained Deborah Bortner, director of the consumer division of Washington state’s Department of Financial Institutions.

That’s where Raines came in.

Raines describes himself as a “Renaissance Indian.” He stands just under 6 feet tall, his long black hair flowing in curls down his neck. Although he was born in Portland, Oregon, and raised in Alaska, Raines has Oglala blood on his father’s side and always felt a connection to Pine Ridge.

In 2011 he moved to the reservation, styling himself an “economic development consultant in Indian Country,” according to promotional materials he submitted to the tribe. In an email to a tribal official, Raines talked up his dedication to the Oglala Sioux. “I don’t have a wife and kids,” he wrote, “as my career with bringing economic development to the [tribe] is my wife and kids.”

On a cold night in January 2012, Raines made his pitch to the Wakpamni district, one of nine regional subdivisions that make up the reservation. Although the tribe elects a president and a legislative council to govern the reservation, districts like Wakpamni have the power to make business deals without permission from the council. Raines and his relatives lived in the district, and he had allies there.

If Wakpamni approved Raines’ plan, Cash Cloud could start making loans around the country as an “official tribal entity,” free from interference by state regulators.

Around 40 people showed up that night to the district headquarters, a circular blue building a few miles east of Pine Ridge, the reservation’s largest town (population 3,308).

The meeting grew heated, according to Catches the Enemy, who was in the audience.

Raines was working the crowd.“Does everybody here have a good job?” he asked, according to minutes of the meeting. “I didn’t think so.”

“These big industries need to move onto sovereign land,” Raines continued.

Raines had brought with him a draft contract that created a partnership between Cash Cloud and the Wakpamni district. Cash Cloud would pay a fee of $5 per new loan, up to $100,000 per month, into a bank account held by Raines. After the $100,000 threshold was reached, the lenders would pay $2.50 per loan.