I'm not going to lie, I'm in payday loans and I have to say black hat has never been so prevalent. It's not just the little guys, the big guys are at it big style too. I'm not really an advocat of black hat - I'd much rather we all did white hat stuff - but that's not the real world that we have to survive in.
The ironic thing is that since Penguin 4.0 many sites have risen through the rankings due to the reawakening of what can be described as a 'sack of shit' (thats far worse than a 'can of worms'). I firmly believe that Google got this one absolutely wrong.
Aside from all the long since abandoned 2013 payday affiliate sites re-entering the rankings (which are now outlawed in the UK), I see it all kinds of black hat shenanigans on a daily basis by large bricks n mortar establishments - sape, pligg, gsa - makes PBN's look like white hat. And for all those white hat purists (I assume I won't find many here) - no, you definitely can't compete in a niche like this on white hat alone - if you think you can, come and rank my sites and I'll give you half the profits.