attempted to electronically take the money from my bank

First of all, you are not going to jail. This is a civil offense, not criminal. This is one of the tactics payday loan companies use to scare people into paying them. Be thankful the bank closed your account. We have had people who tried closing their accounts and weren't able to because the PDL companies kept trying to put an ACH through.

We can help you with this. However, we'll need a little more information:

Did you get this loan off the internet or was it a store front loan? If it was via the internet, chances are they are not operating legally.

What state do you live in?

How much did you borrow, and how much (if any) have you paid back including fees and interest?

Once we have this information, we can check to see if this company is licensed in your state and what your state laws are regarding PDLs.

But again, don't worry as far as being arrested or the police/FBI getting involved. That is not going to happen.

bholl ~ Take some deep breaths, it will be ok. No one is going to show up to arrest you or anything like that. The most that will happen is you will get a lot of phone calls demanding payment and idle threats. Do not let these people scare you. Please provide the information that dbaker suggested and we can help you through this.

It will get better! Many of us have and still are going through stuff like this, so don't feel alone.

I, too, have a pdl with Instant Loan Today. They haven't gotten any money because I have a HARD DEBIT BLOCK on my account. So no "payments" are being received. I have emailed/faxed/mailed letters. They totally ignore me. The only kind of response I've gotten from Instant Loan Today are emails stating that they didn't get their payment. Just computer generated emails. If they're calling me, I don't have a clue. I look at my caller ID. If it doesn't say who it is, I don't answer it. So they may be trying to call, but I'm not answering. Anyway - my point here - I had one other pdl send me a very threatening abusive email stating that they were sending my information to the "fraud department" for "investigation". I emailed them back and told them to go ahead and have it investigated because then they may find it interesting that internet pdl's are illegal in my state so the loan should never have been issued. So, let them investigate. It's not "fraud". And try to put a HARD DEBIT BLOCK on your bank account so no more debits will go through. Actually close your account and open a new one at a new bank. If you can't close your current account immediately, at least get the HARD DEBIT BLOCK put on it so that these people will not be able to take your money.

Be sure to inform your bank that these are unauthorized withdraw attempts, and contact your state's Attorney General's Office.