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After Hunterbrook Media published its months-long investigation into United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) today, two of the videos Hunterbrook Media cited have disappeared from UWM’s social media channels.
One of the videos, an advertisement for UWM’s directory of mortgage brokers, stated: “when you work with an independent mortgage broker, you have a local mortgage expert on your side to personally advise you throughout the process and has your best interest in mind. They’ll shop dozens of lenders to find the right home loan for your needs.”
Hunterbrook Media found $39 billion in mortgages came from brokers who sent UWM more than 99% of their business — according to a data analysis that controlled for interest rate, transaction type, and other variables.
The FindAMortgageBroker.com advertisement was linked here and featured in this morning’s story. It can still be viewed on the Internet Archive here.
The second video that disappeared was a Super Bowl ad, which Hunterbrook Media found had been repurposed on an independent mortgage broker’s Facebook page — omitting the frame that disclosed the ad had been made by UWM.
Here is the link to the original UWM video, which has since disappeared. The version on the broker’s Facebook page remains live as of this writing.
Sam Koppelman is a New York Times best-selling author who has written books with former United States Attorney General Eric Holder and former United States Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal. He helped build Fenway Strategies into one of the preeminent strategic communications firms in the country—with side quests speechwriting for Michael Bloomberg, running the surrogate remarks operation on the Biden-Harris campaign, and co-founding Mayday, which is now one of the leading information providers on how to access reproductive health care in states with bans. Sam has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Time Magazine, and other outlets — and occasionally volunteers on a fire speech for a good cause. He has a BA in Government from Harvard, where he was named a John Harvard Scholar and wrote op-eds like “Shut Down Harvard Football,” which he tells us were great for his social life.
Matthew Termine is a lawyer with nearly five years of experience leading the legal team at a mortgage technology company. In 2017, Matt was credited by the Wall Street Journal, among others, for identifying suspicious mortgage loan transactions that led to several successful criminal prosecutions, including that of a prominent political operative and the chief executive officer of a federally chartered bank. He is a graduate of Trinity College and Fordham University School of Law.
William D. Cohan, a former senior Wall Street M&A investment banker for 17 years at Lazard Frères & Co., Merrill Lynch, and JPMorganChase, is the New York Times bestselling author of five non-fiction narratives, three about Wall Street, including Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World; House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street; and The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co., the winner of the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. His book, The Price of Silence, about the Duke lacrosse scandal was published in April 2014 and was also a New York Times bestseller. His 2022 book Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, about the rise and fall of GE, once the world’s most powerful, valuable, and important company, was published in November 2022 by Penguin Random House. It was a New York Times bestseller and on the best book of the year lists published by The New Yorker, The Economist, The Financial Times, and the DealBook section of the New York Times. He is also a founding partner of Puck, the digital publication, and its Wall Street correspondent. For 13 years, he was a special correspondent at Vanity Fair. He is a former columnist for DealBook. He also writes for The Financial Times, The New York Times, Air Mail, Barron’s, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, Town & Country, The Nation, Fortune, The Hollywood Reporter, and Politico, among other publications. He is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts and now lives in New York City and upstate New York with his wife and, on occasion these days, their two sons.
Daniel Sherwood contributed reporting. Sherwood joined Hunterbrook from The Capitol Forum, a premium subscription financial publication, where he was an Editor & Senior Correspondent, writing and managing market-moving investigative reports and building the Upstream database. Prior to The Capitol Forum, Daniel has experience conducting undercover investigations into fossil fuel companies and other research. He also served as an Honors Law Clerk in the Criminal Enforcement Division of the EPA. He has a JD from Michigan State University. Daniel is based in Michigan.