Del Kimball, a prominent figure in Kansas City’s payday lending scene, waived a federal indictment on Tuesday afternoon and pleaded guilty to a bankruptcy fraud charge, the Kansas City Star reported. Kimball, 53, appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Beth Phillips, who accepted Kimball’s guilty plea. He’s set for sentencing on June 2; he will remain out on personal recognizance bond until then, so long as he does not travel outside of the Kansas City area and surrenders his passport. He faces no more than five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. The charges against Kimball stem from his personal bankruptcy case from 2015. Kimball, as well as a downtown Kansas City payday loan company he co-owned called LTS Management, were forced into involuntary bankruptcy by creditors claiming to be owed millions of dollars from investments into payday lending. In 2017, a bankruptcy trustee accused Kimball of concealing assets, bank accounts and income from his bankruptcy disclosures. Debtors in bankruptcy are supposed to reveal all aspects of their financial condition. Those omissions, according to the trustee, included his sale of a warehouse for nearly $1 million, the sale of three cars for more than $120,000, eight wristwatches worth more than $29,000 and a painting by Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood.
