Now they can wear their costumes for realz! In a rare case of schadenfreude, the evil Steven J Baum firm – who threw that funtastic Halloween party mocking down-on-their-luck homeowners – was dropped by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s lists of law firms eligible to handle foreclosures!
From the Buffalo News:
In an abrupt turn of events, Steven J. Baum is shutting down his foreclosure law firm and laying off at least 90 full- and part-time employees in Amherst and Long Island just days after losing the bulk of his business when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stopped giving the firm new work. The closing could also affect 600 employees at Amherst-based Pillar Processing, a neighboring firm that handles much of the paperwork from the Baum office.
Steven J. Baum PC said Monday it had filed a WARN notice with the state Labor Department and local authorities, notifying them of impending “mass layoffs which [are] occurring at the law firm.” The firm said it notified its employees as well.
The notifications are required under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. The law firm employs about 67 at its main office at 220 Northpointe Parkway and another 22 on Long Island at a secondary office.
“We will fulfill all of our obligations under WARN and during this process we will also fulfill our remaining work on behalf of our clients,” Baum said. “Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful*, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices.”
But what may have hastened the firm’s demise were photos that recently emerged into the national spotlight from the firm’s Halloween party last year, at which Baum employees dressed up as foreclosure victims and attorneys, mocking and ridiculing them. Baum says he has apologized, but the damage was done. In the wake of those photos and national stories, politicians, consumer advocates, and even other attorneys denounced him for a lack of sensitivity, and the mortgage industry quickly began to distance itself.
Yes, it IS very sad that all these folks are losing their jobs… I guess. Hopefully, they hated their jobs anyway. But really, anybody who mocks the innocent victims of the financial debacle by partying the night away dressed up as hobos, deserve a helluva lot worse than having to deposit their bi-weekly unemployment checks. Steven Baum’s crocodile tears are laughable in the face of his firm’s flouting the court rules and profiteering on the misery of borrowers whose rights were trampled in the rush to foreclose. He is nothing more than a vulture that picked over the financial carcasses of people who have already been destroyed by the nihilistic actions of the Wall Street banksters.
Last week, the great and satanic Steven J. Baum himself sent Joe Nocera, the Times columnist who first published the pictures, an alarmingly pathetic email accusing Nocera of destroying his firm: “There is blood on your hands for this one, Joe… I will never, ever forgive you for this.”
If I were the columnist covering this story, this email would be my Red Badge of Courage, that would totally make my day.
*Really? I thought that was your business model.