California business regulators are stumbling in their efforts to find and ban an unlicensed form of high-interest consumer credit: payday loans available on the Internet.

For three years, the state Department of Corporations has been trying to force these Internet-only businesses to adhere to the same rules that govern the state-licensed payday loan stores that offer short-term, unsecured loans of up to $300.

But many of these Internet lenders — with no physical presence in the state and run as tribal entities outside of California — say they are Indian-owned businesses, linked to sovereign Indian nations and immune from state regulation.

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