The powerful owners of a payday lending company faced a crisis in March 2021 when their other business, a now-defunct sports gambling operation, was under investigation by Tennessee regulators.

The couple, Michael and Tina Hodges, had already turned to Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton in 2014 to create a new triple-digit interest loan called a “Flex Loan.” The couple’s company, Advance Financial, through the Flex Loan, went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars lending to the state’s most financially vulnerable.

From November 2020 through Jan. 16, when Action 247 closed, this was happening. A person could walk into any Advance Financial storefront and borrow up to $4,000 at a 279.5% interest rate. Then, at the same window, the customer could legally tell the store’s employee to deposit cash into an Action 247 account, through which they could gamble the money on something like a football game.

Members of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp., which oversaw sports gambling at the time, were concerned by the arrangement and the company, but the agency’s board was prevented from doing anything about it by its attorney in January 2021. Two months later, the board attempted to assert its power over Action 247 by suspending its license for violations related to its failure to ensure that customers adhered to state gambling laws; ultimately, Action 247 went to court, where a judge lifted the suspension but allowed the agency to continue its investigation.

That’s when Sexton stepped in.