Loan shark

A loan shark is a person or body that offers loans at extremely high interest rates. The term usually refers to illegal activity, but may also refer to predatory lending with extremely high interest rates such as payday or title loans. Loan sharks sometimes enforce repayment by blackmail or threats of violence. Historically, many moneylenders skirted between legal and extra-legal activity. In the recent western world, loan sharks have been a feature of the criminal underworld.

Ah Long in Malaysia and Singapore
Ah Long (derived from the Cantonese phrase '大耳窿' (Jyutping: daai6 ji5 lung1) is a colloquial term for illegal loan sharks in Malaysia and Singapore. They lend money to people who are unable to obtain loans from banks or other legal sources, mostly targeting habitual gamblers. Often, they discreetly advertise by sticking notices, mostly on lamp posts and utility boxes around a neighbourhood, thus vandalising public property, as authorities have to then remove such advertisements. They charge very high interest rates (generally about 40% per month/fortnight) and frequently threaten violence (and administer it) towards those who fail to pay in time.

Ah Long tactics
When a person fails to pay in time, the Ah Long will spray paint, splash, or write threats in paint or markers on the walls of the house or property of that person as a threat of violence and to scare, and perhaps even shame, the borrower into repaying the loan. A common use of painting includes the characters "O$P$" meaning "owe money, pay money", as well as the debtors' unit number. According to local police authorities, there have been cases where borrowers and even their family members were beaten or had their property damaged or destroyed, and some victims have committed suicide. In other cases, flowerpots placed outside the debtors' units were smashed, debtors' house gates have been tied up with cable ties and at the extreme, debtors' property such as their house door/gate or their cars have been burnt.

Pig heads are sometimes hung outside the borrower's house, as a type of intimidation as well as a way of 'marking' the person as a loan 'defaulter'.

Ah Long sometimes break into victim's houses and steal items of the loan's value. This method is commonly used to save time and also effort.

Recent cases shows that Ah Longs also display the borrower's identity card on a huge banner and post it on fences. Since Ah Longs need only an identity card from borrowers, this tactic is becoming common because it shames the borrower publicly into paying up.

Borrowers often use outdated identity cards to borrow money, with the intent to not pay what they owe. As a result, unsuspecting house owners end up paying the price of receiving the Ah Long tactics of intimidation. Since they are not the borrowers, the intimidation does not stop and the Ah Long will keep on harassing them.