Foreclosure Attorney Baum Deserted by the Biggest Mortgage Servicers

Foreclosure attorney Steven J. Baum has been deserted by the biggest mortgage servicer. They will no more direct their business assignment to his New York based legal firm. Fannie Mae decided to break off with the firm came after it was reported by The Buffalo News that Freddie Mac had instructed its mortgage servicers not to have any dealings with the firm of Baum. Fannie Mae issued a notice that read, “After November 15, 2011, servicers may not refer any new Fannie Mae foreclosure or bankruptcy cases in New York to Steven J. Baum, P.C.”. The notice further stated that Baum would “continue to work on foreclosure and bankruptcy matters referred on or before November 15”. On 10th November Freddie Mac had banned its servicers to refer any new cases to the legal firm of Baum located in Amherst, in the suburbs of Buffalo. Critics have name Baum’s firm as a “foreclosure mill” for the huge volume of foreclosures it processed. It has come under media scrutiny following the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe. Last October, Baum had come to a settlement by paying $2 million as fine to the federal prosecutors for overhauling its foreclosure operations. The firm had admitted that it “occasionally made inadvertent errors in its legal filings in state and federal court’. The firm pledged that from henceforth experienced lawyers would deal with the supervision and reviewing of foreclosure cases. Notification would be given to the government in case of objections about inaccuracy in the court filings. Immediately following this settlement pictures appeared showing the employees of the firm at a Halloween party mocking the victims of foreclosure actions. These photographs were accompanied by Joe Nocera’s (of the New York Times) column in which he wrote that this was “hardly the first piece of evidence that the Baum firm treats homeowners shabbily – or that it uses dubious practices to do so”. Baum had later apologized for these “inappropriate costumes”. Currently the A.G. of New York is investigating the activities of the firm trying to identify illegal papers filed in court of New York State pertaining to foreclosure cases. A spokesperson of Fannie Mae through e-mail confirmed that the firm had stopped sending new assignments to the firm of Baum but did not make any further comments apart from that on the notice. Freddie Mac’s spokesperson did not make any comments on the matter; neither did Baum or his spokesperson.