At the start of the year, I detailed how an error on my part, compounded by the phenomenal incompetence of two organs of the British state, resulted in me temporarily owing several thousands of pounds to the taxman. I’ll soon follow up with how my efforts to reclaim their ill-gotten gains have progressed, but first I want to take you on an intriguing digression.

In short: after much effort, I finally got (some) of my already-paid student loan repayments credited against my tax bill. But, in the letter confirming this to me, HMRC directed me to contact the SLC if I wanted to dispute the amount, suggesting a site that I haven’t seen before:

Photo by the author

Peculiarily, the domain instead leads to a predatory payday loan company called WageDayAdvance—rates from 48.1% APR to 1,721% APR:¹

Screenshot by the author

A WHOIS lookup on the domain shows that it was last updated in November 2025, though the redirect has been in place since at least January 2025. The site is completely absent from the Wayback Machine throughout 2024, and when it was last crawled before then in June 2023 it redirected to the official government student loan repayment page.

According to the history of the domain, it was originally managed by a company called Demys Limited on behalf of the Student Loans Company. They were acquired by another company called Com Laude in 2018, who seem to have renewed the domain only once before letting it lapse by November 2024.

Screenshot by the author

Three queries, telling a tale of incompetence

The current registrar of the domain is one Paul Greenhalgh, a sole trader trading as both a domain name sales, investments and brokerage firm called DNExperts and a Web development business called Potshot (whose own Web site is almost entirely non-functional):

Screenshot by the author

Screenshot by the author

DNExperts’ own site is currently empty, but when it previously had content (in February 2024) they linked to the GoDaddy-owned Dan.com (now Afternic).

Greenhalgh lists a Polish phone number, but otherwise has no online presence that I could uncover. The Potshot site first appears in July 2023 (and it didn’t work then either). Another site for which he serves as registrar (purefx.co.uk) is a foreign exchange brokerage, so he seems to have something of a line in dodgy financial clients.

Let’s return to the domain-squatting payday loan company. On their own domain, they actually date all the way back to Mar 2007. In 2012 they referenced CURO Translantic Limited (company № 04179322), incorporated in 2001 and dissolved in 2021. As of 2018 the site declared that they were authorised by the FCA (register № 672831), but they were deauthorised upon their dissolution in 2021.

Between 2019 and 2020 the company were under administration, with their assets being bought by another company that seem to have had no ongoing relationship with the brand. Wage Day Advance Limited (company № 13115670) was then incorporated as a new company (with a Portuguese woman listed as its sole officer, who was not previously an officer for CURO Transatlantic), and lasted until 2025 when they were voluntarily struck off. The new company served as whatever an Introducer Appointed Representative is for another company called T Dot UK Limited (FCA register № 688026, company № 09225672); they appear to run an affiliate network for targetted selling of advertisement. They trade under 45 different names, and the FCA register warns that they may be part of a scam:

Screenshot by the author

Screenshot by the author

In August 2024, the site went down, and when it came back online in October they were now owned by a new company called Chojin Ltd (company № 07339611, FCA register № 732880), incorporated in 2010 and again with a completely different set of officers. The FCA register shows them using 7 trading names, and includes the same warning about clones. Intriguingly, the Web site provided for them on the FCA register is readies.co.uk, which currently also redirects to WageDayAdvance (but which, until July 2023, was its own site). The email address on the FCA register is scott@readies.co.uk, and Companies House shows that Chojin Ltd’s sole officer shares that first name.

So, in sum, it seems that SLC outsourced management of their domain to a third party, who forgot to renew the registration following their acquisition (or perhaps SLC ended the contract). For the last year and a half or so, the domain has been squatted by a sketchy payday loan company. The company has repeatedly traded hands, including affiliation with two separate FCA-registered companies, both of which seem to primarily operate within this parasitic industry and for both of which the FCA has posted possible scam warnings. And lastly, the sole director of Chojin Ltd seems to be directly tied to the decision to domain-squat this formerly government-owned URL in order to catch unwary loanholders. Either SLC have no idea that any of this is the case, or they know and have not notified HMRC, who have also not checked and who continue to direct people to the site.