The press is watching…

As first reported here on Jan 21, 2012

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Bar Complaint | David E. Fennell of NTS & FEI Accused of Engaging in the Dishonest and Deceitful Practice of Falsely Charging Clients Inflated Non-Judicial Foreclosure Publication Costs

This just in and it appears to be a huge bombshell.

They operate in NINE states and own SEVERAL companies. By far the largest foreclosure mill operation in the West.

Northwest Trustee Services operates in Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California and elsewhere.

This is the same Northwest Trustee Services that is buying up/starting newspaper companies in the Northwest.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based company and its affiliates have in the past two years bought or started up six weekly newspapers in the Northwest. It could buy as many as 50 more in the Western states, said Rim co-founder Stephen Routh.

Strangely, the moves have more to do with the booming and controversial business of home foreclosures than with journalism.

From the bar complaint below, it appears they got nailed for Falsely Charging Clients Inflated Non-Judicial Foreclosure Publication Costs. What is most interesting about the complaint is it is from an attorney from one of the newspapers they use for publications, in which NTS/FEI is was? one of their biggest customers.

OregonLive.com runs with the story…

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Portland foreclosure attorney hit with ethics complaint due to premiums

A lawyer representing The Bulletin of Bend and the Redmond Spokesman
newspapers has filed an ethics complaint with the Oregon State Bar against an executive of the Northwest’s largest foreclosure trustee, accusing the company of secretly marking up the cost of foreclosure legal ads to its lender clients.

Michael Dillard, of the Karnopp Petersen law firm in Bend, filed the complaint last week against David Fennell, a lawyer and a principal owner of Northwest Trustee Services, which by its own account has handled more than 250,000 foreclosures.

Dillard alleges that Northwest Trustee and its advertising operation, FEI, charged its clients an undisclosed 18 percent premium over the actual price. These “deceptive and dishonest” tactics, Dillard said, allowed FEI to collect from its clients about $360,000 more than it actually paid for the foreclosure notices published in the Redmond newspaper just since 2009.

You can check out the rest from OregonLive.com here…

Copy of the original complaint below…

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4closureFraud.org

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Bar Complaint | David E. Fennell of Northwest Trustee Services