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Posted on 10/30/2011 8:12:16 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
On Friday, the law firm of Steven J. Baum threw a Halloween party. The firm, which is located near Buffalo, is what is commonly referred to as a “foreclosure mill” firm, meaning it represents banks and mortgage servicers as they attempt to foreclose on homeowners and evict them from their homes. Steven J. Baum is, in fact, the largest such firm in New York; it represents virtually all the giant mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party until around noon, and then return to work, still in costume. I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s.
That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.
When we spoke later, she added that the snapshots are an accurate representation of the firm’s mind-set. “There is this really cavalier attitude,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that people are going to lose their homes.” Nor does the firm try to help people get mortgage modifications; the pressure, always, is to foreclose. I told her I wanted to post the photos on The Times’s Web site so that readers could see them. She agreed, but asked to remain anonymous because she said she fears retaliation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Do the owners of those homes (the banks or mortgage firms) have a right to foreclose if someone defaults or don’t they?
What does that have to do with the article?
I don’t care if everything they do is by the letter of the law. It’s disgusting to mock people like this.
When they got called on filing misleading pleadings, affidavits, and mortgage assignments in the state and federal courts in New York, they bought off the investigation for 2 million bucks.
They plead "occasional errors" but didn't mind paying 2 LARGE to get the gnat away from their eye.
No biggie for them, they are making billions.
I soiled my browser going to the NYT page to read the article.
If I hadn’t gone there, I might have missed the only website in the world that actually runs ads for the Chevy Volt...I had never seen one before. So the visit was worth it.
As for the treatment of these people they are foreclosing on, I have two questions:
1.) Do banks have a right or not have a right to foreclose?
2.) How is anything described in this article illegal?
Sure, it is in bad taste, but the article is a hit piece by the New York Times, who do whatever they can in their pages to destroy anything that has to do with the making of money, but only when they aren’t actually making it or encouraging the government to try to make it.
Yeah, trying to make people pay up for a product they have purchased, used, and don’t want to or cannot pay for is an ugly part of the business. Any money collection part of a business is ugly. Uglier than you know, unless you have been chased, hounded or caught up in their beauracratic labyrinth.
But it is a necessary part of the business. And as such, leaves them open to the hate and malediction of all people who fall into their sphere of influence, and all those who sympathize with the plight of those entangled.
These people at this company didn’t do themselves any favors. They are dummies and idiots for doing what they did. Should they be run out of business? Only if you feel strongly enough about this to put pressure on the lenders who utilize them, causing them to cut ties with that firm and find another one, which is what I would suggest.
We agree completely on this.
Screw these people, seriously. They’re playing with fire and asking for trouble by mocking people. I don’t care what the situation is in some instances, someone doesn’t deserve to be mocked.
I just found the actions of the law firm, which admittedly does a distasteful job, reprehensible. I can't imagine how any Christian in good conscience could work there. Maybe none do.
Dollars to Donuts these people are mostly lawyers.
Lawyers are Dems.
Dems are sleazebags who revel in other’s misery.
Are you really surprised about this?
It is hard to understand. The only thing I can think of is the familiarity breeds contempt, in the way some police or nurses get hardened to the people they deal with all the time.
That is the only “excuse” I could think of, and it isn’t much of one. Working in that industry can’t be all that much fun.
I work in health care, and I get a lot of job satisfaction out of knowing if I work hard at my job, it improves the care we give our patients.
I can’t imagine they get anything like that in their jobs.
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