November 21, 2011

"Only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself"

"If you think you are good enough, you have just started your decline."  ~Unknown

Well. What goes around will eventually come around.

The law firm that had a Halloween party mocking the people they foreclosed on has gone out of business.

After the Times published those pictures of Baum employees gleefully mocking down-on-their-luck homeowners at a super fun Halloween party, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac cut Baum off.


Of course, Nocera's column was just the final straw. According to the Long Island Bankruptcy Blog, Baum filed "more foreclosure proceedings against New York homeowners than any other attorney in New York's history." How did he do it? By filing error-filled "robo-signed" documents, and using shady tactics that one Long Island judge likened to something out of the "Twilight Zone." Last month, Baum paid a $2 million fine to settle a Federal case accusing the firm of filing misleading papers to rush along foreclosures. 


The scary thing about this is, were it not for their limitless hubris, boasting about their misdeeds and mocking the people they hurt, it might have turned out differently.

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