Some large banks behave like criminal enterprises. E.G. FX scams, Sub prime predatory mortgages, LIBOR, derivatives, money laundering, etc. These bad banks pay relatively small fines as punishment for their crimes. Nobody goes to jail and they keep coming up with clever ways to scam customers. One new example is the LIBOR fraud. The banks netted $85 billion from this scam and paid fines of $4.5 billion. Not a bad return on investment!
A prime example of really helping someone is the 908 Market loan. You can view the tombstone on our site www.quakerstatecommecialfinance.com . In this case, the borrower had a personal tragedy. His whole family was killed in a van wreck coming back from church (I believe six + people including his parents, and all his kids were killed). It was reported on national evening news several years ago. The borrower had to borrow money to bury his family (This is the truth).The unscrupulous private lender charged an interest of nearly 30%. The borrow was also required to pay him back in cash every week. This drained his cash flow and damaged his credit. We were able to get him an affordable loan to help get him back on his feet.