Two former Stockton Mortgage LOs are suing their ex-employer for allegedly hacking into their personal Gmail accounts & then dumping the contents into public court filings.

This case is very messy & IMO raises uncomfortable questions about just how far employer surveillance tools can reach.

Also in today’s edition of The Scoop, we’ve got the shortlist on who might be bidding against UWM for Two Harbors, thoughts on Freedom’s intriguing deal for Seneca, how Lower is playing both offense & defense in a dual poaching lawsuit saga & much more!

This one’s for paid subscribers only. So if you’ve been lurking, now’s the time to upgrade.

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According to the complaint, Stockton began accessing Chris & Ashley Hoehns’ personal Gmail accounts around August ‘25 while they were still employed, using what appears to be a forensic data collection tool to capture emails.

The Hoehns, now at Novus Home Loans, say the smoking gun is the metadata: Emails Stockton attached to its own poaching lawsuit against the Hoehns contain an "Event Date" field, which is a category Google doesn't natively generate. But forensic tools do!

Stockton didn't just allegedly access the emails. It attached them as exhibits to 3 public court filings in a separate poaching lawsuit against the Hoehns, w/o sealing or redacting them. One exhibit included unredacted details of Christopher's personal loan, salary, & financial information. The complaint notes that court records are routinely scraped by data brokers, creating identity theft risk.