Preston Claims Benchmark Stole From Its Branches & Mortgage Tech's Bloody Week

When we last covered this brawl, Benchmark Mortgage had sued star LO Denise "Mortgage Nerd" Donoghue & top recruiter/division manager Marty Preston for allegedly sharing trade secrets w/ competitors & issuing ultimatums. Preston's counterclaim, filed Thursday, tells a very different story: that Benchmark has been skimming millions from its own branches for years, & when Preston caught them, they fired him by text & sued him into silence.

We break it down for paid subscribers today. Also in this edition: unreported details on the deep cuts 🔪at Dark Matter Technologies & Mortgage Cadence, plus some thoughts on housing’s chief meme officer Bill Pulte & his latest controversy involving… AI Jesus?

And one more thing: a special edition of The Scoop drops Sunday. Stay tuned!

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"This is not a trade secret case,” Preston’s lawyers wrote, “Benchmark breached its contracts by overcharging its branches and shorting Preston's pay to the tune of millions of dollars. When Preston confronted Benchmark, Benchmark fired him & sued him for using information Benchmark gave him to show Benchmark had cheated him & its branches out of millions of dollars."

Per the counterclaim, Kentucky-based Preston joined Benchmark in ‘09, grew volume 5x & “recruited close to one-third of Benchmark's entire retail mortgage business.” Because of his success, Benchmark elevated him to national business development director in ‘17.

But Preston says the lender had a habit of making comp promises & then re-trading 🤝 the deal. The central allegation is that Benchmark had agreed to cap its corporate margin (the "scrape" it takes off loan revenue before paying out branches) at a contractually defined level. Preston discovered that Benchmark was secretly retaining at least double the margin it had represented to him, enriching corporate at the expense of Preston's branches & the LOs in his division, the filing says.

I’ve attached a copy of the lawsuit for Mortgage Scoop Insiders. There’s disputes about yachts, ranch excursions, personal chefs & the sponsoring of golf pros. Plus, loads of insider details on the bloody week in mortgage tech.