Pastor Preached Against Usury. Now His 144% Interest Loans Are at the Center of a Multimillion-Dollar Lawsuit

By Christopher Kelleher

CLINTON, Md. — Pastor Delman Coates has spent years preaching about the morality of money.

He has condemned usury. He has criticized financial systems that leave people trapped in “debt and bondage.” He has invoked Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers and called upon people of faith to reclaim Christianity’s historic resistance to exploitative lending.

He has even criticized a modern religious culture that, in his words, legitimizes “getting wealth at any cost.”

But court records now provide a striking look at Coates’s own activities as a private lender.

According to loan agreements, emails and other documents attached to a lawsuit Coates filed in Rhode Island, money was advanced by Coates at rates of 10 percent per month and 12 percent per month. That is the simple equivalent of 120 percent and 144 percent a year.

One agreement imposed a $56,250 charge to extend a $624,960 obligation by just three weeks.

That is approximately 9 percent for 21 additional days—the simple annualized equivalent of roughly 156 percent.

Court exhibits also appear to show additional interest being calculated against balances that already reflected prior interest or extension charges—effectively resulting in interest being charged on interest.

And some of the money was advanced not against conventional real-estate mortgages or extensive loan underwriting, but against anticipated proceeds from personal-injury claims being handled by the late Massachusetts attorney Ronald W. Dunbar Jr.

Dunbar described some of those transactions in an email as “60 day deals at the 10% per month.”

Now Dunbar is dead.

Coates says he was defrauded.

And some of Dunbar’s former clients—people who say they too were victims of Dunbar—find themselves defendants in litigation seeking to hold them responsible for what Coates alleges Dunbar did.

For those former clients, the fallout from Dunbar’s financial dealings did not end with his death.

It followed them into court.

A Lawyer Accused of Betraying His Clients

As The Brookfield Examiner previously reported, former clients and others who dealt with Dunbar have accused the late attorney of financial misconduct involving substantial sums of money.

Since our original investigation, additional people have come forward describing losses they attribute to Dunbar.

The emerging picture is complicated. Dunbar was not merely practicing law. Documents show him arranging and participating in private financial transactions involving client claims, anticipated settlement proceeds and a Rhode Island real-estate development.

Precisely where all of the money ultimately went remains unclear.

Dunbar died in July 2026, leaving behind former clients, lenders, lawsuits and unanswered questions.

One of the people seeking answers—and money—is Coates.

His Rhode Island lawsuit portrays him as a victim of a fraudulent lending scheme.

In a statement provided to The Brookfield Examiner through his attorney, Coates said he was himself a victim of Dunbar, whom he trusted as his lawyer.

“Dr. Coates was defrauded by the attorney he trusted, Ron Dunbar,” his attorney said.

Coates’s attorney said Dunbar structured and prepared the transactions while simultaneously acting as borrower, guarantor and counsel to borrowers, and that Dunbar never advised Coates to obtain independent counsel or provided written disclosure of those conflicting roles.

“That trust, the trust a client places in his own attorney, is what made this fraud possible,” the statement said.

But Coates is not the only person who says Dunbar deceived him. Some of the very people now facing claims in Coates’s lawsuit say they were Dunbar’s victims as well.

10 Percent a Month Against Personal-Injury Claims

Some of the earliest transactions described in the records involved personal-injury cases being handled by Dunbar.

In an email discussing the financing, Dunbar described the arrangements plainly:

“60 day deals at the 10% per month.”

In one documented transaction, $250,000 was advanced with $300,000 due approximately 60 days later.

The security was not a traditional piece of commercial real estate. It was the anticipated recovery from a client’s personal-injury claim.

Under the agreement, settlement checks were to be made payable to Dunbar Law, deposited into the firm’s client-funds account and used to repay the financing. The agreement also carried guarantees from Dunbar and Dunbar Law.

The records identify multiple Dunbar clients whose anticipated personal-injury recoveries became connected to the financing, including Jeffry Pike, Joseph and Jennifer Riley, and Thomas Tischler.

Tischler’s case is particularly significant because Coates’s complaint alleges that Dunbar later represented that the matter had settled and that money was due to Coates from the recovery.

By September 2025, an email included with Coates’s exhibits listed $2,772.89 per day in interest associated with Tischler, alongside daily interest amounts for Pike and Riley.

Coates alleges those representations were false or, alternatively, that settlement proceeds were received and not delivered to him.

But Tischler and the other former clients now occupy a very different position in the litigation.

They were Dunbar’s clients. They say they were victims of the lawyer they hired to represent them. And they are now among the people Coates is attempting to hold responsible for money he says Dunbar failed to repay.

That makes the personal-injury financing about more than an extraordinary rate of return. Money was being advanced at 10 percent per month against anticipated recoveries belonging to injured clients of Dunbar—clients who would later find themselves caught in litigation arising from Dunbar’s financial dealings.

Then Came Five Five—and The Orchard

The financial relationship did not begin with Five Five Plus LLC.

According to Coates’s own complaint, Coates had been advancing money through Dunbar before the transactions involving Five Five and The Orchard, a multimillion-dollar condominium development in West Warwick, Rhode Island.

David Fromm says he owns Five Five Plus LLC, the company behind The Orchard, and that Dunbar had no authority to borrow money on the company’s behalf or pledge its development as security.

Fromm also says neither he nor Five Five ever received the loan proceeds.

To Fromm, the lending terms make the transactions even harder to explain.

“These interest rates are ridiculous,” Fromm told The Brookfield Examiner. “I have real loans from real lenders on this development at a fraction of these rates. I could have gotten money cheaper from organized crime than what the pastor was charging Mr. Dunbar. I never authorized this.”

Fromm points to Coates’s own complaint, which describes a lending relationship with Dunbar that existed before Five Five entered the picture.

“According to the pastor’s own lawsuit, he was lending Dunbar money before Five Five ever entered the picture,” Fromm said. “Then suddenly my company and my development are being used to supposedly secure these loans.”

Fromm also questions where the money went.

He says money purportedly advanced for Five Five was wired across state lines to Dunbar rather than deposited into a Five Five account.

“If this was really a loan to Five Five, why wasn’t the money wired to Five Five?” Fromm said. “Why was it going to Dunbar? I never received a dime.”

Those circumstances raise basic questions about the transactions.

If hundreds of thousands of dollars were being lent against a multimillion-dollar real-estate development, who verified who owned it? Who verified Dunbar’s authority? Why wasn’t the money sent to the purported borrower? And what due diligence was performed before the money changed hands?

Fromm says a deed search, municipal records or a phone call could have established the ownership of The Orchard. He also questions why the transactions lacked the type of underwriting and recorded security he says accompanies his conventional development loans.

Those questions have led Fromm to make a far more serious allegation.

“I have no reason not to suspect that Coates and Dunbar may have devised this scheme to steal my property,” Fromm said.

Coates flatly denies that allegation.

“On Mr. Fromm’s accusation that this was a scheme to take his development: that is false, and Dr. Coates welcomes any review of it,” his attorney told The Examiner.

Coates’s attorney said Coates never met Fromm and never had any dealings with him. He said the purpose of Coates’s lawsuit is to determine whether any of the defendants actually received money Coates advanced through Dunbar.

“If they did not, then they, along with Dr. Coates, were deceived by the same man,” the statement said.

Fromm says he has nevertheless reported his allegations to law enforcement and wants investigators to examine the movement of money across state lines and determine whether state or federal laws were violated.

For Fromm, the dispute now puts him alongside other people who say Dunbar victimized them.

“I am a victim,” Fromm said. “I never authorized this. I never received this money. And now I’m fighting the pastor’s lawsuit along with other Dunbar clients who say they were victims, too.”

Fromm says the central issue is no longer merely whether Dunbar owed Coates money. It is how Dunbar’s private financial relationship with Coates ultimately produced claims against a development Fromm says Dunbar had no right to pledge.

Fromm Says He Plans a Counterclaim

Fromm says he does not intend to limit his role in the litigation to defending against Coates’s allegations.

He plans to pursue a counterclaim against the pastor, arguing that the lawsuit itself has damaged his property interests and placed both his livelihood and the development in jeopardy.

“This lawsuit has tainted my deed and put my livelihood—and the livelihoods of people who depend on this development—in peril,” Fromm told The Brookfield Examiner. “The pastor shotgunned this lawsuit against people who were Dunbar’s clients and victims without first determining whether we had anything to do with Dunbar’s alleged bad acts.”

Fromm says the consequences are real: a multimillion-dollar development is now entangled in litigation over financial transactions he maintains he never authorized.

“We were Dunbar’s clients. We trusted him. If Dunbar was committing fraud, follow the money and hold the people who actually participated responsible,” Fromm said. “Don’t turn his victims into his co-conspirators.”

Another Real-Estate Deal, Another Allegation of Fraud

Dunbar’s dealings involving The Orchard were not the only real-estate transaction to produce allegations of fraud.

In a separate verified lawsuit filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Massachusetts, former client Kevin Greene alleges he entrusted $350,000 to Dunbar for a proposed real-estate transaction involving property in Newport, Rhode Island.

According to Greene’s complaint, Dunbar provided him with a purportedly executed agreement bearing the signature of a representative of the company involved in the proposed purchase.

After Dunbar’s death, Greene says he contacted that representative, Molly Kirby, who told him she had not signed the document, that the property was already under agreement with another party and that Dunbar had no involvement in the transaction.

Greene’s lawsuit alleges the document was “not genuine” and that Dunbar used it to induce him to transfer the $350,000 into Dunbar Law’s account.

A Glimpse Inside Dunbar’s Client Trust Account

A separate dispute involving two more former Dunbar clients provides a rare glimpse into the movement of money through Dunbar Law’s client trust account during the final month of Dunbar’s life.

Charles Grant’s attorney says Grant wired $215,000 into the account on July 6, 2026, solely to complete a real-estate transaction. Grant never authorized Dunbar to use the money for personal expenses, operating expenses or payments to unrelated third parties, his attorney alleges.

A Brookfield Examiner review of the account’s redacted July bank statement confirms two incoming wires associated with Grant—one for $148,000 and another for $67,000.

The account began July with $278,500. During the month, it received four deposits or credits totaling $266,000, while recording 62 withdrawals or debits totaling $481,900, plus a $9,600 check. It ended the month with $53,000.

The balance stood at $397,805.54 at the close of July 6, the day Grant’s money arrived. By July 20, it had fallen to $92,000. Four days later, it stood at $28,000.

The statement also shows two wires from the trust account to High Pace Construction LLC: $40,000 on July 20 and $20,000 on July 27.

Grant’s attorney alleges that the $60,000 came from Grant’s entrusted funds and was transferred without his knowledge or authorization. An August 31 demand letter seeks the return of the money and threatens legal action.

High Pace says it, too, was a Dunbar client and maintains that the money represented legitimate payment for construction work it had already performed on Dunbar’s home.

The dispute leaves two former Dunbar clients, both claiming to be victims, fighting over money Dunbar controlled. Grant says his money was diverted. High Pace says it was legitimately paid for completed work and should not be forced to bear the loss.

The same fundamental conflict is now unfolding on a much larger scale in Coates’s Rhode Island lawsuit: people who say Dunbar victimized them are being forced to defend their money and property against claims brought by another person who says Dunbar victimized him.

Dunbar’s Former Clients Say They Were Victims Too

Coates did not simply seek recovery from Dunbar’s estate.

His lawsuit names Five Five Plus and others and asserts sweeping claims that include civil conspiracy and civil RICO.

Among the people swept into the litigation are former Dunbar clients connected to the personal-injury claims involved in the financing.

Some of those former clients deny knowing about Dunbar’s broader financial dealings, deny authorizing participation in a fraudulent scheme and say they consider themselves victims of the lawyer they had trusted to represent them.

They now face another burden: defending themselves against Pastor Coates’s lawsuit.

The result is an extraordinary collision: the pastor who says Dunbar defrauded him is pursuing people who say the same lawyer defrauded them.

Coates’s attorney says the lawsuit is intended to determine whether those defendants actually received any of the money Coates advanced.

If they did, Coates is seeking to recover the money he says Dunbar took from him. But if they did not, Coates’s position is that they may have been deceived by Dunbar as well.

“If they did not, then they, along with Dr. Coates, were deceived by the same man,” his attorney said.

The former clients say they entrusted their legal matters to Dunbar. They now find themselves accused of participating in conspiracy and racketeering arising from financial transactions they say they knew nothing about and that were orchestrated by the attorney they hired to represent them.

If their accounts are true, Dunbar’s death didn’t end their ordeal. It simply changed who was coming after their money and their assets.

The Pastor and the Money Changers

Coates says Dunbar defrauded him of millions.

Fromm says Dunbar used his company and development without authority. Former personal-injury clients caught in Coates’s lawsuit say they were Dunbar’s victims, too.

The courts will ultimately determine who bears legal responsibility for the financial wreckage Dunbar left behind.

But Coates faces a different question—one created not by his lawsuit, but by his own words.

For years, he publicly condemned usury and warned about financial systems that leave people in “debt and bondage.”

Now his own court filings document his role as a lender in transactions carrying extraordinary interest and involving the anticipated recoveries of injured clients.

Coates says there is no contradiction.

“Since Dr. Coates has never received and is not asking for any of the interest or fees you have reported, then there is no conflict between his preaching and this litigation,” his attorney told The Brookfield Examiner. “Dr. Coates is merely asking the court for the return of his money. Nothing more.”

But Coates’s own verified complaint adds another dimension to that explanation.

The complaint states that before the unpaid transactions now at issue, Coates and Dunbar completed “several loans of the same design.” According to the complaint, Dunbar proposed the transactions, set the rates and fees, drafted the documents and “repaid each loan in full.”

Those successful transactions, Coates alleges, induced him to trust Dunbar with the much larger advances that followed.

The complaint also states that Coates received a $70,000 interest payment relating to an earlier, satisfied transaction known as Weston.

In a follow-up response, Coates’s attorney acknowledged that Coates received principal, interest and fees from the earlier transactions Dunbar completed.

“On the earlier loans that Dunbar completed, Dr. Coates was repaid with the fees Dunbar himself had proposed and computed,” his attorney said.

According to his attorney, Coates advanced $2.85 million in principal through the unpaid transactions at the center of the lawsuit. He has been repaid $400,000 and has recovered nothing else, leaving $2.45 million in principal allegedly unpaid.

Coates’s attorney also addressed the complaint’s reference to $4,442,877.18 as the amount Dunbar had calculated was owed.

Counsel said the figure is included as Dunbar’s own written admission and not as a request that the court enforce the interest rates and fees contained in the loan documents.

The complaint, counsel said, pleads alternative forms of relief: the return of the principal Coates advanced or a declaration that the loan documents Dunbar prepared are unlawful and void.

“Dr. Coates is not asking any court to enforce the rates Dunbar wrote,” his attorney said.

Coates maintains that Dunbar designed the transactions, priced the loans, prepared the documents and used the successful repayment of earlier loans to gain his confidence before obtaining millions of dollars that were not repaid.

His lawsuit alleges precisely that.

But Coates was not new to these transactions when the unpaid loans were made.

Before advancing the $2.85 million now at issue, he had participated in several earlier loans of what his own complaint calls “the same design.” Those loans were completed, and Coates was repaid with the interest and fees Dunbar had proposed, including the $70,000 Weston interest payment.

The successful repayment of those earlier loans may help explain why Coates trusted Dunbar. It also establishes that the unpaid transactions were not an isolated encounter. They followed a course of high-interest lending from which Coates had previously received the promised returns.

The court filings reviewed by The Brookfield Examiner do not identify any objection by Coates to the stated rates or fees while Dunbar was performing the earlier transactions and paying the promised returns.

The legality of the agreements is now before the court after the later transactions collapsed and millions of dollars went unpaid.

Coates may have been defrauded by Dunbar.

But his alleged victimization does not erase his repeated participation as a lender in transactions carrying extraordinary rates. One does not erase the other.

And the loan documents remain central to the case because they establish the terms under which the money was advanced—and Rhode Island law could determine whether those agreements are enforceable at all.

Rhode Island’s Hard Line Against Usury

The court will not decide Coates’s lawsuit based on biblical teachings about usury. It will decide the case under Rhode Island law—and Rhode Island law imposes strict and potentially devastating consequences on lenders who charge unlawful interest.

Rhode Island generally prohibits lenders from charging interest exceeding the greater of 21 percent annually or an alternate rate calculated under state law. In each of the Rhode Island Supreme Court cases examined by The Brookfield Examiner, the applicable ceiling was 21 percent.

Rhode Island General Laws § 6-26-4 declares that every contract made in violation of the state’s interest-rate limit—along with any mortgage, pledge, deposit or assignment given as security for that contract—“shall be usurious and void.”

The statute also provides that a borrower who has already made payments of principal or interest under a usurious contract may recover those payments from the lender.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has made clear that this is not a flexible standard.

In the 2014 case NV One, LLC v. Potomac Realty Capital, LLC, the court described Rhode Island’s civil usury law as an “inflexible, hardline approach to usury that is tantamount to strict liability.”

“Contracts in violation of § 6-26-2 are usurious and void, and the borrower is entitled to recover any amount paid on the loan,” the court wrote. “The lender’s subjective intent to comply with the usury laws is immaterial.”

The court affirmed a Superior Court order voiding the promissory note, mortgage and liens securing the loan.

It also rejected the lender’s attempt to rely upon a usury-savings clause—contractual language purporting to reduce any excessive interest to the highest rate permitted by law.

Enforcing such clauses, the Supreme Court warned, would “entirely obviate any responsibility on the part of the lender to abide by the usury statute, and would, in essence, swallow the rule.”

The message from Rhode Island’s highest court is unmistakable: responsibility rests with the lender.

A claimed intention to comply with the law does not save a usurious transaction. Calling interest a fee does not change its legal character. And contractual language promising compliance cannot rescue a loan that violates the statute.

A Strikingly Similar Rhode Island Loan

The Supreme Court applied those principles again that same year in LaBonte v. New England Development R.I., LLC.

The similarities between the transaction in LaBonte and the transactions documented in Coates’s own lawsuit are difficult to ignore.

In LaBonte, a lender advanced $275,000 under an agreement requiring the borrower to repay $325,000 after 30 days, plus one month of additional interest calculated on the $325,000.

The lender characterized the $50,000 difference as a “commercial loan commitment fee.”

The Supreme Court looked beyond that label.

It concluded that the purported commitment fee was part of the interest charged on the loan. Every calculation considered by the court substantially exceeded Rhode Island’s 21-percent limit.

The court affirmed the determination that the loan agreement was usurious and void. It also reaffirmed that a usury-savings clause could not rescue the transaction.

The court acknowledged that Rhode Island’s Legislature had adopted what it called “a rather draconian manner of dealing with the problem of usury.”

Then it invoked an ancient legal maxim:

“The law is hard but it is the law.”

The documents attached to Coates’s complaint describe a comparable structure on an even larger scale.

According to those records, short-term advances carried interest of 10 and 12 percent per month. Balances increased rapidly, and one agreement imposed a $56,250 charge merely to extend a $624,960 obligation for 21 days.

Whether that extension charge or any other fee will be counted as interest is ultimately a legal determination for the Rhode Island court.

But LaBonte establishes that attaching the word “fee” to a charge does not automatically place it beyond Rhode Island’s usury law. Courts examine what the charge actually represents.

Rhode Island Voided Loans at Far Lower Rates

Rhode Island’s hard-line approach was reaffirmed in the 2021 case Commerce Park Realty, LLC v. HR2-A Corp.

That case involved multimillion-dollar commercial loans carrying effective annual interest rates of 26 and 34 percent.

Although Rhode Island law provides a potential exception for certain commercial loans exceeding $1 million, that exception requires the borrower first to obtain a repayment analysis performed by a certified public accountant licensed in Rhode Island.

The borrowers in Commerce Park Realty signed certifications claiming that the required analyses existed. But the lenders could not produce the analyses or identify the accountant who supposedly performed them.

The Supreme Court held that the lender bears the burden of ensuring compliance with Rhode Island’s usury law. Because the statutory requirements had not been satisfied, the court affirmed the judgment declaring the loans usurious, null and void.

The court also rejected the lenders’ attempt to recover the older debt that had been refinanced through the unlawful loans. The new loan agreements had extinguished the earlier obligations, the court held, and the void loans could not be enforced.

The comparison to the transactions described in Coates’s lawsuit is stark.

Rhode Island voided multimillion-dollar commercial loans carrying effective annual rates of 26 and 34 percent.

Coates’s own court filings document agreements calling for interest of 10 and 12 percent per month—the simple equivalent of 120 and 144 percent annually—along with a 21-day extension charge equivalent to approximately 156 percent annually.

What Rhode Island Law Could Mean for Coates

Coates’s attorney says Coates is not asking the court to enforce those rates. He says Coates seeks the return of the principal he entrusted to Dunbar and, alternatively, a declaration that the documents Dunbar prepared are unlawful and void.

That position does not eliminate the usury issue. It places the validity of the loan documents—and the legal basis upon which Coates may recover his money—directly before the court.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has held that a lender’s lack of intent to violate the usury law does not, by itself, make an otherwise unlawful loan enforceable.

“The lender’s subjective intent to comply with the usury laws is immaterial,” the court held in NV One.

Rhode Island law contains limited exceptions, including one permitting certain commercial loans exceeding $1 million when specific statutory safeguards are satisfied. Whether any exception applies to Coates’s transactions—and whether the multiple advances should be considered separately or together—will be for the court to determine.

No court has yet decided whether the Coates loan agreements are usurious.

If the court determines that the transactions violated Rhode Island’s interest-rate law and that no exception applies, however, Coates could be prohibited from enforcing the loan agreements themselves.

Whether he could nevertheless recover some or all of the unpaid principal through an independent fraud, restitution or other claim would present a separate legal question.

Could Earlier Payments Be Recovered?

Rhode Island’s usury law could also place payments from the earlier, completed transactions at issue.

Coates’s attorney acknowledges that Dunbar repaid those loans with the fees Dunbar proposed and calculated, including the $70,000 Weston interest payment identified in the complaint.

Under Rhode Island General Laws § 6-26-4, a named borrower who made payments on a usurious loan may bring an affirmative claim against the lender to recover amounts already paid—including both principal and interest.

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has emphasized that this right belongs specifically to the named borrower who made the payment, either directly or indirectly.

Whether Dunbar’s estate could pursue such a claim would depend upon the language of each loan agreement, who was identified as the borrower and who actually made the payments.

If Dunbar Law or another entity was the borrower and payor, any recovery claim might belong to that entity rather than Dunbar’s personal estate. If Dunbar was merely a guarantor and not a named borrower, his estate might not qualify to recover under the statute.

No such claim by Dunbar’s estate has been identified.

But if Dunbar was the named borrower, if he made the payments and if the earlier loans are ultimately determined to have been usurious, his estate could potentially seek the return of money Coates already received—not merely oppose enforcement of the unpaid agreements now before the court.

Coates’s attorney says he wants only the return of the money his client advanced.

Rhode Island law may determine whether—and through what legal claim—he can get it back.

It may also determine whether money Coates received from the earlier transactions must be returned.

Disclosure: Ronald W. Dunbar Jr. previously represented The Brookfield Examiner editor Christopher Kelleher in an unrelated civil lawsuit. That litigation did not involve loans, lending or any of the financial transactions discussed in this article.

Original photo: Oregon Department of Transportation, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Graphic altered and adapted by The Brookfield Examiner.