MoJo looks into ‘foreclosure barons’ through ex-employees

Photo by Flickr.com user respres.

In a piece that CJR’s Ryan Chittum describes as “the must-read of the week,” Andy Kroll of Mother Jones investigates the profitable push to foreclose and the tactics that go along with it. He writes:

“Backdated documents, according to a chorus of foreclosure experts, are typical of the sort of shenanigans practiced by a breed of law firms known as ‘foreclosure mills.’ While far less scrutinized than subprime lenders or Wall Street banks, these firms undermine efforts by government and the mortgage industry to put struggling homeowners back on track at a time of record foreclosures.”

Besides documents, the story relies on interviews with eight anonymous ex-employees to get a glimpse into the practice controlled by Florida attorney David J. Stern, whose gross revenues for processing foreclosures grew from $40 million to $200 million in two years, the story says.

Today’s Tip: To get sources to open up, flip the reporter-source relationship, Andy says.

Andy Kroll

“My first question is always ‘What questions of yours can I answer? How can I put your mind at ease?’” he says. “That makes it a conversation between two people — not a one-way interrogation session.”

To establish some rapport before transitioning into his questions, he says he explains what on- and off-the-record mean, what the story is about and what he plans to ask.

He also mentions that other ex-employees have talked with him. “That opens people up, builds trust,” he says.

Robin J. Phillips, Web managing editor for BusinessJournalism.org, offers these tips on using anonymous sources. Also check out this previous post about finding employees to talk to.

Gary Cohn, who won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1998, tells of following employees’ cars out of their workplace’s parking lot to their homes when employers made it difficult for him to speak with them.

As for the response to Andy’s story, he reports that the Florida Attorney General’s office has announced investigations into three of the state’s biggest law firms handling foreclosure cases, including the one run by Stern.