Complaint Review: Golden West Funding Inc. / Net Direct Mortgage - Costa Mesa California

My name is Rory Hughes. Bill Combs and I own two Mortgage Companies headquartered in Costa Mesa, California. Golden West Funding and NetDirect Mortgage. Several years ago, we decided to expand one of our companies, Golden West Funding, a Federally Licensed Mortgage Banker into the State of Arizona. Unfortunately for us, we were introduced to and subsequently hired Ms. Debbie Trottier as our Branch Manager. Soon after, Debbie wanted to and we allowed her to add her husband, Tom to the staff there in Phoenix, Arizona. First of all, the Trottier's did not utilize their retirement funds to finance the opening of this branch office for Golden West Funding. The Capital required to start this branch came directly from Golden West Funding. The Trottier's earned a salary and were offered bonuses based upon the profitability of the branch. By the year 2000, their combined compensation equaled $130,000 between them. Yet the branch remained at a breakeven or loss due to rapid expansion, then problem loans that arose out of Ms. Trottier's poor underwriting habits. As it turns out, the rapid growth came due to Ms. Trottier's pension for underwriting and approving sub-standard loan files. Our customer's loved her, because she would approve loans that no other local companies would touch. After several problems loans hit our books, we started to intensify our Quality Control on her work in a effort to tighten the rains and provide loans that met industry standards. She saw the handwriting on the wall, that the time was coming where we would no longer accept her type of underwriting and the customers that became loyal to her following. Soon we discovered that Ms. Trottier and her husband had set up their own office under another company name just downstairs from our office and started to funnel our business to their new operation. Around that same time, it was discovered that Ms. Trottier had started utilizing a petty cash account at a local Wells Fargo Bank to shift revenue from our Corporate account to her petty cash account. By the time we confronted her and her husband in person regarding the issues of loans being funneled from us to them, and the cash to the tune of over $82,000 was missing, they both quit and said fine, we are already off and running without you! As it turns out, they had purchased a large home site and were in the mist of building a custom home to the tune of over $500,000, which was high flying for Phx at that time! It turned out that they had over extended themselves and needed more money quickly to continue their project(s). We could have gone to the Police in Phoenix and had them both arrested at this point for Grand theft, illegal wiring transfers, stealing HUD loan transactions, the list goes on and on.. We made a corporate decision to move toward rebuilding our staff and business without them, focusing on moving ahead in a positive fashion rather than spend energy and money to chase these crooks. They had no resources to return the money at that time anyway, and had no intention of doing so either. We were able to continue with our operations for another year or so and have subsequently closed the office and refocused our work efforts outside of Arizona. The Trottier's did file a frivolous lawsuit against the company, claiming they were owned money, as they did in this rip off report, but the suit was thrown out of court by the judge within weeks due to lack of merit and proof of any wrongdoing by GWF, Mr. Hughes and/or Mr. Combs. Please post this rebuttal, investigate the facts and remove our good name from your site/service. Sincerely, Rory Hughes P.S. I did not address this issue on your site due to the lawsuit and the fact that their statements have and/or had no merit. Please clear the facts on this issue. Sincerely, Rory Hughes & Bill Combs Golden West Funding, Inc..