A loan shark is a person who offers loans at extremely high interest rates, has strict terms of collection upon failure, and generally operates outside the law. Description Because loan sharks operate mostly illegally, they cannot reasonably expect to be able to use the legal system to collect such debts, they often resort to enforcing repayment by terms of blackmail and threats of violence. Historically, many moneylenders skirted between legal and criminal activity. In the recent western world, loan sharks have been a prominent feature of the criminal underworld. Loan sharking is not to be confused with predatory lending with extremely high interest rates such as payday or title loans, which is sometimes considered to be "loan sharking" (or, at least, unfavorably compared to loan sharking by critics) regardless of whether it is legal. A key difference between "traditional" loan sharking and predatory lending is that lenders alleged to be engaged in the latter practice are expected to stay within the law when making and collecting loans, and thus the debate into such practices often focuses on whether they are ethical as opposed to whether they are legal. However, laws regulating lending practices vary so widely between jurisdictions (even in the same country, particularly between states in the United States) that particular practices that might be technically legal (if arguably unethical) "predatory lending" in one jurisdiction might be considered illegal "loan sharking" if attempted in an identical manner in a different locale. Japan Regulation of moneylenders is typically much looser than that of banks. In Japan, the Moneylending Control Law requires only registration in each prefecture. In Japan, as the decades-long depression lingers, banks are reluctant to loan money and regulation has become tighter, illegal moneylending has become a social issue. Illegal moneylenders typically charge interest of 30 or 50% in 10 days (in Japanese, these are called "to-san" ('to' meaning ten and 'san' meaning three, or 10-3) or "to-go" ('to' meaning ten and 'go' meaning five, or 10-5), which is about 1.442 million % or 267.5 million % per annum. This is against the law that sets the maximum interest rate at 20%. These lenders usually do business with those who cannot get more money from banks, legitimate consumer loans, or credit cards. Ireland The Central Bank of Ireland were criticized for doing nothing to protect those with low incomes, the vulnerable or those who have low levels of