Shoot The Messenger

When I first started following Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter they were under attack from Loan Center of California. The bank claimed that it lost funding because a would be lender read something on the blog site that made them change their mind. For this the bank thought that Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter should be punished. In my mind it was mission accomplished, but Loan Center of California spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking them and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves in Federal court, even as the bank was going down in flames. Now Loan Center California is just another dead, deadbeat of it's own doing not the blog's.

Since then they have been under attack by one or another disgruntled lender, in December of 2008 alone Implode-O-Meter had over $100,000 in legal bills. Now comes along the next Johnny Lately, Mortgage Specialists Inc (MSI), a cesspool of an operation in New Hampshire, to try to finish what Loan Center of California could not.

MSI caught Implode's attention following a 2008 investigation by banking regulators in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for alleged violations of banking law. Some of these alleged violations include:

"Represented photocopied customer signatures as originals;
Removed a signature from a loan file;
Altered broker fee agreements after the consumer signed the documents;
Failed to keep customer application files under lock as required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act;
Fraudulently issued a 40-year adjustable rate mortgage with a balloon payment at the end of 30 years to a customer who had applied for a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage."

As a result of the investigations, MSI was fined $725,000 and required to open its old loan files for further review by state regulators.

After being spanked for $725 million by the The New Hampshire Banking Department you have to wonder what MSI has against the Implode-O-Meter, but rather than licking their wounds they sicked their attack dogs on the web site. I asked the site's founder Arron Krowne via e-mail, what laid they thought they had to stand on. Here's what he said.

I've noticed a pattern in these goons... they don't particularly cover up their cronyism, even when it is in the public record -- their concern is to stop us from actually pointing it out to people, so there will be consequences of their bad behavior.

Yep, nufh said.