Las Vegas-based Credit One has become a profit machine by squeezing exorbitant fees out of its subprime customers. This is a look inside the story of how the father of American tennis superstar Emma Navarro and his elusive Wall Street partner became multibillionaires on the backs of people with poor credit.
A former Citi and Goldman Sachs banker, 62-year-old Navarro, has made an estimated $4.8 billion fortune lending to, and collecting from, people with poor or no credit histories. It’s a rough business, one that can involve sticking those who are already struggling financially with onerous fees, badgering them multiple times a day for weeks on end if they fall behind on their payments and taking them to court over several hundred dollars.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2025/04/01/inside-credit-one-ben-navarro-emma-navarro-brett-hildebrand-bank-and-how-two-men-made-billions-exploiting-people-with-bad-credit/
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A former Citi and Goldman Sachs banker, 62-year-old Navarro, has made an estimated $4.8 billion fortune lending to, and collecting from, people with poor or no credit histories. It’s a rough business, one that can involve sticking those who are already struggling financially with onerous fees, badgering them multiple times a day for weeks on end if they fall behind on their payments and taking them to court over several hundred dollars.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2025/04/01/inside-credit-one-ben-navarro-emma-navarro-brett-hildebrand-bank-and-how-two-men-made-billions-exploiting-people-with-bad-credit/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Jon Hyatt here at Forbes and joining me today is my colleague Jemima McAvoy to
00:08discuss our investigation into Credit One Bank and how it has become one of Wall Street's
00:13best-kept secrets.
00:14Hi, Jemima.
00:15Thanks for joining me today.
00:17Thanks for having me, Jon.
00:18So tell me about where this story begins.
00:22It's really with one person, right?
00:24Ben Navarro.
00:25Who is Ben Navarro?
00:26So most people will know Ben Navarro or recognize his name as the father of tennis player Emma
00:33Navarro.
00:34She's currently ranked number 10 in the world, women's tennis player, and she's really been
00:39a rising star on the global tennis scene over the past few years.
00:43She kind of came out of nowhere and has been really successful.
00:46Or maybe they know Ben Navarro as a philanthropist in Charleston, South Carolina, where he lives.
00:54We were interested in Ben Navarro and his business, which is Sherman Financial Group,
00:59which he founded in 1997.
01:02First he built one of the biggest debt collection businesses in the United States and then bought
01:08a credit card company, which is called Credit One Bank, not to be confused with Capital
01:14One Bank, despite similar branding and names.
01:19And that has become, you know, as you said, one of Wall Street's best-kept secrets.
01:23It's a subprime credit card business, which has been growing rapidly.
01:27So we were interested in exploring the source of Ben Navarro's wealth.
01:31Tell us about Ben Navarro's business partner, Brett Hildebrand.
01:34Unlike Ben Navarro, his partner, Brett Hildebrand, was a virtual unknown until our story.
01:42He was an MIT graduate.
01:44He studied math and economics, both receiving his bachelor's degree and master's degree from
01:49MIT.
01:51And sources told us that Brett and Ben were sort of a classic partnership in that one
01:58of them, Ben, was charismatic.
02:02He could strike deals with people on Wall Street.
02:05He was really sort of a face and team leader of the business, whereas Brett was really
02:11the sort of left-brain math whiz behind the scenes, devising financial models, crunching
02:18data, and building a lot of the architecture of that subprime business that they built
02:24together.
02:25And, Jemima, I want to go back to the origins of this story.
02:31Several months ago, why did you, why did we think this was a story worth looking into?
02:37Well, one reason is just the trends that we're seeing in the U.S.
02:41You know, debt is at an all-time high.
02:44Consumer debt is at an all-time high of $5 trillion, excluding mortgage housing debt.
02:52And there's over 100 million people in America that qualify as having either poor credit
02:59or no credit history that can't qualify for credit cards.
03:02And it's a very vulnerable segment that Credit One is unique in dealing with.
03:09Most other big banks won't touch this consumer.
03:12They can't get credit cards elsewhere.
03:15And so we were interested in how the mechanics of a business like this would work and how
03:19that may be playing into broader trends of rising debt across the U.S.
03:23And so neither Ben Navarro nor his partner, Brett Hildebrand, agreed to be interviewed
03:29for this story.
03:30We did, however, speak with over 30 people, including former employees of Sherman Financial
03:37and Credit One, as well as the debt collection business, Resurgent.
03:41We spoke with customers, attorneys, and we reviewed hundreds of pages of legal and financial
03:47documents to try to piece together this story on our own of how they built this sort of
03:53subprime empire.
03:55Credit One did send responses to some of our questions, and I think their overall stance
04:01is that they are providing a valuable product to Americans looking to rebuild or build credit.
04:08So we should note that.
04:11What became obvious to you early on, though, Jemima, about Credit One's business?
04:15Yeah.
04:16So as you said, we spoke with customers.
04:19We spoke with attorneys in the industry.
04:22We spoke with former executives of the bank and former employees of Sherman Companies.
04:27And I think something that became clear immediately was, you know, what's unique?
04:32One of the things that's unique about Credit One is that most banks make most of their
04:36income from interest rather than fees.
04:40Credit One relies heavily on fees, and these are fees that you don't see at other, you
04:45know, other banks, other major banks.
04:48For example, at Credit One, some people have to pay a fee to raise their credit limit.
04:53At one point, the bank charged a fee if you got married and needed to change the name
04:57on your card.
04:59There's all sorts of, you know, fees that for somebody who is, you know, not financially
05:07doing financially well, you know, a common credit card that's offered by Credit One
05:12has a credit limit of $300.
05:15You're paying an annual fee of $100 after the first year, and then you're getting all
05:19these extra fees.
05:20It's just it ends up that the person who has a card doesn't even have much, you know, money
05:27to deal with there.
05:29And so that really stood out from the beginning is how this business may be causing some people
05:36to go further into debt.
05:40And there is also the connection with, you know, Ben and Brett.
05:44They started Sherman as a debt collector.
05:47And for many years, they sold that debt collection business in 2021.
05:51But for many years, they owned both the debt collection business and the credit card business
05:55and how those two were intermingled and kind of fueled the growth of one another.
06:01So I think those are some of the things that stood out off the bat.
06:04Yeah.
06:05Tell us more about the origins of the Credit One business and its relationship with the
06:10debt collection business.
06:11Can you kind of walk us through sort of the how Sherman Financial Group came to own Credit
06:18One Bank?
06:19Yeah.
06:20So both Brett and Ben got their start on Wall Street.
06:23They were both working at Citi and Goldman Sachs before starting Sherman.
06:30They left Wall Street and in 1997, they started Sherman.
06:33The first thing they did was they set up this debt collection business, Resurgent.
06:37So Sherman was headquartered in New York, but they set up Resurgent in Greenville, South
06:43Carolina.
06:45And so Resurgent quickly grew to become one of the biggest debt collectors in the country.
06:51And that's important context because I think at some point, Ben and Brett realized that,
06:56you know, they're making a good amount of money collecting debts.
06:58But what happens if you're on the origination side of that?
07:02So they spotted this bank called First National Bank of Marin County, which had been founded
07:07a few years earlier in California.
07:12And it had been in trouble with the OCC, which is a government bank regulator, on multiple
07:18occasions for basically offering credit cards to people, getting them to charge a deposit
07:24on that card.
07:26And then by the time they had loaded those customers up with fees, they sometimes had
07:29as little as $2.50 left to use on the card.
07:33And these are, you know, subprime and deep subprime customers who this is something that
07:37would really affect them.
07:39So the First National Bank of Marin County had been fine in the years leading up to when
07:45Sherman, Ben and Brett, bought the bank.
07:49They rebranded it a few years later to Credit One Bank and, you know, they haven't had any
07:54of the same legal troubles, but they followed a similar business model, which is targeting
07:59the subprime customer.
08:01Their main way of doing it is through mailing out over, you know, 10 million mailers a month
08:06to people with unsecured credit cards and offering them, you know, small credit lines.
08:12So that's the origin of the business.
08:15So what makes, another thing that makes Credit One unique is its relationship with its parent
08:19company, Sherman.
08:20Can you tell us about that, John?
08:22Yeah.
08:23So Credit One does something that other credit card issuers do, which is they sell a lot
08:28of their loans to a third party.
08:32This is a way that the company essentially funds its business, right?
08:36You have to sell some of these loans in order to have capital on your balance sheet so that
08:41you can make new loans and continue to grow the business.
08:45And so what you see with a lot of companies like Capital One, like Wells Fargo, these
08:51other banks with credit card businesses, is that they package these loans into notes or
08:57trusts that then other investors can purchase.
09:01And so Credit One does this too, but unlike these other companies, there's only one known
09:07investor buying that debt.
09:09And that investor is its parent company, Sherman.
09:13And so what essentially we see with Credit One is that about 90% of the credit card loans
09:20that it issues to its customers are purchased and then held by affiliates of its parent
09:27company, Sherman.
09:29And what makes this really interesting from a Forbes and Wealth perspective is that a
09:35ton of the income that the bank is generating off of these loans through the fees that you
09:43described earlier, through the interest payments, a ton of that income is actually flowing into
09:49Sherman, which holds the loans.
09:52And so it's actually sort of this hidden but super profitable business.
09:59And what makes this really interesting from a sort of broader Wall Street perspective
10:03is that, you know, Sherman needs money to buy all those loans from its portfolio company,
10:11Credit One.
10:12So where does it get that money?
10:13According to the sources that we spoke to, Sherman gets that money from a lot of the
10:18big Wall Street banks that publicly at least don't have anything to do with the subprime
10:24business.
10:25So banks like Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, all these large financial institutions
10:33are actually lending money to Sherman, enabling it to buy all of these loans from Credit One.
10:42And so it's sort of at the surface level, it looks like this is just a standalone credit
10:47card business.
10:48It's doing its thing, but the extent of the business is much bigger than what we see on
10:54the publicly reported financials of Credit One, and it involves the whole breadth of
10:59Wall Street.
11:00Additionally, what's quite interesting is that Credit One enjoys partnerships with one
11:05of the largest credit card issuers, American Express, which of course, you know, you think
11:10of American Express, you think of sort of that middle, upper middle class sort of high
11:15life.
11:16So it has those connotations of success and wealth.
11:20And so Credit One and American Express have a partnership where they sort of cross sell
11:25customers to each other.
11:26So those who are looking to upgrade and build their credit, you know, they might be enticed
11:31by that American Express partnership.
11:34Additionally, it has a partnership with Credit Karma, one of the most popular personal financial
11:39services websites.
11:41So it has an affiliate marketing partnership there.
11:44So Credit One is really intricately bound up with sort of the broader financial system
11:49in a way that I don't think has been reported until now.
11:52Yeah.
11:53And just to, you know, piggyback off what you're saying there is, you know, the big picture
11:57takeaway from that is a lot of these other banks, you know, you mentioned Chase, Citi,
12:03they won't service this deep subprime customer directly because, you know, frankly, it's
12:08kind of an ugly business.
12:10Like you are, as we said, loading people up with fees and it can look bad, but then
12:16they're indirectly or directly, you could argue, fueling the growth of Credit One by
12:22funding the business through these loans via Sherman.
12:26So they have a foot in that business, even if they, you know, don't directly say so.
12:32From what we've been able to glean from our reporting is that Sherman always pays its
12:37loans off.
12:39Sherman is a valued partner to these big banks.
12:42You spoke with an insider at Wells Fargo who's familiar with that relationship and they spoke
12:47extremely highly of Sherman and the Sherman team.
12:50So you know, these large financial institutions are absolutely benefiting from Credit One's
12:57business model.
13:00So are Credit One's owners, Ben and Brett.
13:03Talk to us a little bit about how much money these two guys have made from this business.
13:08Yeah, so Credit One, you know, as I mentioned, they started off as, you know, owning this
13:14debt collector resurgent.
13:16They decided to sell that business in 2021.
13:19You know, Credit One was just making them so much money that they didn't need that business
13:23anymore.
13:24And it was also the source of some legal issues for them.
13:27So, you know, easier for them to cut that off.
13:31Credit One is the source of the vast majority of both Ben and Brett's net worth, their wealth,
13:37which we estimate Ben is worth $4.8 billion and Brett is worth $2.8 billion based on our
13:44estimates of their stakes in both Credit One and Sherman.
13:49You know, a large part of that is dividends that have been paid out.
13:53They paid themselves from the business.
13:55And so we estimate that Ben has made $2.5 billion in dividends and that Brett has made
14:02$1.2 billion in dividends.
14:04So these are massive numbers, especially, you know, you're looking at the fact that
14:08Credit One, the average customer, has a credit line of $1,000 just, you know, taking billions
14:14away from the business.
14:15I think there's definitely a stark contrast there.
14:19Those are after-tax figures, aren't they?
14:21That's $2.5 billion in pure profits.
14:24Yes, exactly.
14:25And those are numbers you won't, you know, you can see Credit One's distributions on
14:28its balance sheet, not to get too into the weeds, but, you know, part of this relationship
14:33with Sherman means that the full scope of how much money these two men are making isn't
14:38clear on Credit One's balance sheet because so many of the loans are held on Sherman's
14:44balance sheet.
14:45So the result is, like, that's why we had to dig into this to find, you know, the true
14:49scale of the amount of money that they're making.
14:52Yeah.
14:53And some of the higher-ups at the bank, people who are involved in the day-to-day at their
14:57Las Vegas headquarters, they've also enjoyed some of the spoils, haven't they?
15:02Talk to us about what you heard from some employees.
15:04Yeah.
15:05So we spoke with some former Credit One executives and employees, and, you know, a few of them
15:12brought up the fact that it was common to see sports cars, you know, exotic sports cars,
15:18Lamborghinis, Aston Martins in the Credit One parking lot.
15:23It's a very lavish building, you know, worth upwards of, I think, $70 million, the Credit
15:27One headquarters itself.
15:30And, you know, at one point, one employee recalls that they had an event celebrating
15:36them reaching a certain amount of certain loan number, and they rented out a casino
15:46and resort in Las Vegas, and they handed all the employees their $500 in cash and envelopes.
15:52So that was the kind of, you know, culture at the headquarters in Las Vegas.
15:57And again, you know, starkly contrast with the customer base that Credit One is serving.
16:02Yeah.
16:03Cash for gambling, cash for sports cars.
16:05These are the people who are running the bank.
16:08Now, Ben and Brett, they don't have any operational roles in the bank.
16:11They're just board members and the largest shareholders.
16:15But obviously, they've been making the most money from the bank.
16:19Talk to us about what they've been doing with all that money.
16:21Yeah, so Ben is, he's, you know, become quite a large philanthropist and investor in Charleston
16:29specifically.
16:31So he's spent over $450 million buying and renovating hotels, historic properties around
16:39the city.
16:41And he's also spent $300 million buying tennis tournaments.
16:45So he owns a major tennis tournament called the Western Southern Open.
16:48He owns also the Charleston Open, which he's rebranded as the Credit One Open.
16:53So he also operates, he founded and operates a network of four schools in the Charleston
17:00area.
17:01So, you know, as an investor, a philanthropist.
17:04And then you can tell us a little bit more about what Hildebrand's been doing with his
17:07money.
17:08Yeah, it's so interesting because Ben, as you just described, has really become a big
17:12deal in South Carolina.
17:14He hobnobs with politicians.
17:15He's close with Senator Tim Scott.
17:18He's kind of seen as this really influential figure in preserving downtown Charleston.
17:25And Brett Hildebrand also lives in Charleston, but he is completely off the grid.
17:30I mean, from our extensive research, we did not see a single news article referencing
17:37who this guy was, how he made his money, let alone how much money he had made.
17:44But behind the scenes, he has been putting that capital to work.
17:48He founded an investment firm called IAG Capital Partners.
17:52This is a billion dollar plus investment firm that has been investing for years now in biotech,
18:00artificial intelligence, next gen data companies.
18:05It has an affiliate in the United Kingdom that has deployed over 600 million pounds
18:11worth of investments as of the last time we checked its website.
18:16So he's stealthily building his fortune even more by betting on these next generation companies.
18:23And he's doing so with the proceeds of the Credit One business, of the customers who
18:29are paying late fees because they can't pay off their balances in time.
18:34And so it is quite the dichotomy between these two guys and how they're putting their immense
18:39fortunes to work and the 18 million or so customers who are really feeling the brunt
18:45of the fees.
18:46What surprised you most about this story?
18:50I think what surprised me most personally was the extent that Ben and Brett have gone
18:59to hide their wealth.
19:03You know, Credit One sent over overstatements and answers to some of our questions.
19:09And their position is, you know, we're offering credit to people that no one else will serve.
19:16You need credit to survive in America today.
19:18We're doing a public service.
19:22You would think that, you know, the largest shareholders in the bank would maybe be publicly
19:29comfortable defending their business and their position.
19:34But what we saw looking through lawsuits in particular was that time and time again,
19:40you know, Credit One, Sherman has fought for years in some cases to avoid giving up even
19:46any basic information about the ownership of the business, about, you know, Ben and
19:52Brett and their relationship with Resurgent, the debt collector.
19:56And I think it's just very interesting and surprising how such a high profile figure
20:03now, you know, Ben Navarro, whether he likes it or not, has become high profile.
20:07He's traveling the world with Emma, going to all her tennis tournaments, you know, dancing
20:12with sombreros after she won this recent tournament.
20:15And then there's photographs of them together and everything.
20:17And I think that the juxtaposition of this, you know, public persona versus, you know,
20:25the extent that they've gone to to hide certain things about the business is the most surprising
20:31thing to me.
20:32How about you?
20:33Yeah, I couldn't put it better myself.
20:34I mean, that's that's exactly it.
20:36And I think what's sort of fascinating and unfortunate from Ben's perspective in a way
20:43is that, you know, he has this kid who is now a sort of an international tennis star.
20:49I mean, as you say, she's traveling the world.
20:51She's a top 10 ranked tennis player.
20:55And he kind of has no choice but to be more of a public figure.
21:01And as a result, that puts his business out there.
21:06Interestingly enough, his business, Credit One, is also now a sponsor of Emma Navarro's
21:12tennis career.
21:13Is that right?
21:14Yeah, that's right.
21:15As of January 2024, they're a sponsor.
21:19So the Navarro family empire is finding new synergies.
21:23Jemima, thank you so much for taking the time.
21:25Yeah, thank you so much, John.