Bloggers Under Attack – Part 2

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I wrote a year ago about the site, Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, being sued by a mortgage company for damages allegedly tied to the company’s listing on the site’s imploded lender list. The claims were fanciful, with the lender claiming that their bank accounts had been drained by institutional warehouse lenders and other sorts of malarky that made the suit look exactly as it was: an attempt to simply shut-up the good folks at Implode by a brute force legal battle where they figured to have the upper-hand in capital to silence the critics.

The good news for all of us? The community around Implode donated to the tune of $20,000 (subsidizing about half the legal costs incurred) and the site and it’s owners had good legal representation that settled the case out of court. The critics lost – they could not silence the new newsmakers and their reportage simply because it made them look bad.

But the battle was far from over, as more bloggers have been sued for critical remarks and coverage of the seedy underbelly that was the mortgage industry. Companies have been sending threatening letters, making menacing phone calls, and dragging these individuals to court at an alarming rate to silence them and protect their company name.

The folks at Implode have soldiered on and in the meantime have become the de facto number 1 news source about the mortgage industry. And because of this they remain under attack.

In October Implode was sued again for an expose that uncovered a scheme that used FHA downpayment assistance, affiliation with Indian Reservations and some creative financing to provide a seller-funded downpayment grant program that seemed to run outside the law – at least according to Forbes and other sources. I’m not an expert on the matter but the article itself seemed well-researched and documented to me and you can judge for yourself at: What the SFDPA Administrators Don?t Want You To Know: Part 1, The Penobscot Indian Tribe Down Payment Grant Program

Once again the owners of the company under the spotlight reacted with threats and eventual legal action against Implode. You can read about the full suit here.

This is sending us all who write and comment on the industry down the dangerous path of simply being bludgeoned to silence by those that would rather bury the bodies and move on, without dealing with the consequences of the greed and malfeasance that permeated the industry over the last decade. It cannot be tolerated or appeased and all of those who responsibly seek to uncover the truths of the past must be protected and supported against those who wish to silence them.

While the site isn’t actively fundraising for this battle, I urge you to support Implode and the people there who have become the preeminent information source on the industry meltdown in their goal to uncover and bright to light the ridiculous systems and schemes that were set up to generate millions of dollars during the boom from unsuspecting (or suspecting) participants. Please give whatever you can. Free speech is our most basic right, and ensuring that the industry is reformed is the only way to keep another housing-fueled meltdown from bringing this country to its knees again.