"I heard lots of stories, and it was sort of an endless tide of human misery. I saw one family disintegrating after another," he said, noting he saw a repeating pattern of people falling into financial traps they could not escape.

"It happens because of the financial facts involved. Anybody who takes out these loans doesn't have money in their checking accounts or they would not need the loan.

"It is likely that in two weeks when the loan is due, they won't be able to afford to pay it off then, either. They will have just enough to pay interest and roll it over. The interest rates are so high that they become onerous very quickly. . . . It's possible they may never have enough to pay it off and just keep rolling it over or replacing it," Peterson said.

Utah has a 12-week limit on rolling over a payday loan, after which no more interest can be charged on it — in theory.

But, Peterson says, lenders easily sidestep that by having customers technically pay off a loan and replace it with an identical new one. Why would they do that and continue high-interest rates? It avoids likely bounced-check fees if lenders deposit post-dated checks required as security — plus additional collection fees, harassment, lawsuits, further damage to credit and cutting off more payday loans.

Pignanelli acknowledges Utah payday lenders indeed sometimes issue replacement loans for borrowers at the end of their 12-week rollover limit. "But that happens only on 3 percent to 5 percent of those loans. They (lenders) want to have the loan paid back sooner than later but will work with people," he said.

Still, Peterson wrote in his book, "Taming the Sharks: Towards a Cure for the High-Cost Credit Market," that he had a "refreshingly candid" talk with a cashier for one Utah lender who said despite Utah's 12-week rollover limit, "We have them paying for sometimes two or three years. . . . They will, like, pay for the loan two or three times and still owe the loan."

Of note, the payday loan industry's national Consumer Credit Research Foundation adopted a list of "best practices" that calls for limiting rollovers to a maximum of four (about 8 weeks), or the state limit, whichever is lower. Most, if not all, of Utah's payday lenders here appear to exceed that "best practices" guideline.

The Center for Responsible Lending, a national group opposed to payday lenders, says its studies show that the average payday loan borrower will end up paying $800 to borrow $325 over time.