For those on shaky financial ground, offers of fast cash are hard to resist. And payday advancers are all too eager to take advantage of the situation.

Florida's ample supply of low-wage jobs has spawned a population of workers who constantly struggle just to get by.

Some succeed. Some stumble and fall -- and quickly become the victims of financial predators.

Wendy Woodruff is one who stumbled.

Like a lot of low-wage workers, she found herself a bit short of cash. All she needed was $100 to get her car fixed and to pay some bills.

So, the Winter Springs administrative assistant turned to ACE America's Cash Express in Fern Park, part of a new industry that offers something called a payday advance.

It seemed simple: Ms. Woodruff wrote a check to cover principal and fees, and ACE would hold the check until her next payday.

In return, ACE gave her the hundred bucks. But when payday arrived, she came up short again -- so she got another advance to cover her first check to ACE.

That was almost three years ago -- and still she owes ACE money.

Ever since she got that first $100, though, it has been like financial quicksand. The more she has struggled, the deeper she has sunk. She wound up getting advances on her paycheck more than a dozen times from different stores, sometimes taking one advance to pay back another. Her merry-go-round of debt has become a ride she can't get off -- and certainly a ride with no brass ring.

In all, Ms. Woodruff has received advances of about $2,400 -- and paid back more than $6,500 -- during the past two and a half years. And she still owes more than she has received.

Ms. Woodruff soon discovered that the plain, small store she first entered, with its solitary clerk, was part of a sprawling, predatory empire.

ACE Cash Express Inc., like many businesses offering payday advances, started out strictly as a check-cashing operation. But payday advances, with their promise of fast money, have turned out to be much more lucrative.

Get an advance of 100 bucks and you could wind up paying fees and charges amounting to more than 380 percent annually - that in a state that limits banks and Florida-based credit-card companies to 18 percent interest a year. How did it get like that?

First, Florida has a huge number of low-paid service workers -- 115,000 tourism workers in Central Florida, alone -- who form a prime target for such predators.

Second, the state has given these businesses its blessing by looking the other way. There is no law that specifically covers payday advances. Instead, they operate under a catch-all law that lets them charge as much as 10 percent of the money they advance, plus other fees.

So now, only a few years old but rolling in cash, the industry has decided that it needs to write its own law to press its advantage.

In fact, industry lobbyists initially suggested doubling what they now charge. They eventually decided that they could scrape by with a 50-percent increase. That would cap all charges but amount, on a typical two-week advance, to 390 percent annually.

That effort also has the backing of payday-advance businesses that haven't yet even entered the state, particularly Check Into Cash, an industry heavyweight with 340 stores that wants to set up shop in Florida.

The Florida Legislature should pass a law, all right. But not one that lets payday advancers gouge the poor.

It's time for state Senate President Toni Jennings and House of Representatives Speaker John Thrasher to inject some sanity into this mess.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think of this," Wendy Woodruff said ruefully. "This industry exploits people. If I can keep even one person from getting into this kind of mess, I'll be happy.''