Ally Financial Suit Says Employee Moonlighted as Foreclosure Defense Lawyer, Stole Confidential Info
One of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders and servicers has filed a federal lawsuit against a former employee. It contneds that Tanya Blackwell moonlighted as a foreclosure defense attorney in private practice while using her day job as a foreclosure specialist at Ally Financial’s GMAC unit to obtain confidential information concerning the company’s operations.
The suit, which was filed yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia, says Blackwell was fired last week for failing to disclose a clear conflict between the duties of her day job and the law offices she operated under her own name in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., Bloomberg reports.
The suit seeks to prevent Blackwell from continuing to make use of the confidential information Ally says she obtained through company computers by going beyond her authorized role as a member of the collateral remediation team at GMAC’s residential foreclosure unit in Fort Washington, Pa.
Blackwell did not immediately respond to phone messages left by Bloomberg and the ABA Journal at her law office requesting comment.
A website for the Law Office of Tanya L. Blackwell lists loan modification and foreclosure defense litigation as two of the firm’s primary practice areas.
A bio page says she went into private practice in Washington, D.C., focusing on criminal law, after graduating from Howard University School of Law in 2004, then worked as a corporate electronic discovery consultant. It makes no specific mention of Ally Financial or GMAC, but says Blackwell “returned to private practice … after spending several successful years managing the portfolio of a real estate investment partnership.”
A Facebook page for the firm links to a number of mainstream media news articles concerning mortgage industry issues.
