We’re in San Antonio, and we have 2 offices that were using us for their surveys. We just found out that they were closed down and we still have 2 open jobs in the works. I haven’t heard anything about First American being involved but I do know that some of the escrow officers are switching to Landamerica. We’re hoping that everyone affected by this will find a new place to work quickly and our prayers are with all.

We have been instructed to stop all title operations on behalf of lenders first choice, and have been told first american will pick up and finish the work eventually??

And the main First American underwriter in Texas, besides United, is LandAmerica.

Hi, I am a surveyor from Texas and I was told that some of the closers will find jobs at First American which isnt necessarly a good thing since they are also being watched. This United Title doesnt have anything to do with Land America. There is one in CA that is. I feel sorry for the workers and wish them luck finding jobs. There arent any around here.

I have spoken with employees of United who have informed me that they will not even be recieving final paychecks and that the employees were not allowed to collect even phone #s to call there clients and advise them to make other plans for closing this week. 6200 title and escrow professionals are not out of jobs! This company has been built on escrow officers who had business that would follow them to United two and a half years ago. Remember that it is the escrow officer who gets the job done and builds the relationship. I know I will follow my escrow officer where ever she may land on her feet. It will be interesting to see if another company decides to pick up where the ex parent company left off and pick up the profits of this extremely well ran division of a failing corporation.

Jerry Hauptman is an unethical ego maniac whose arrogance and belief that laws and rules simply don’t apply to him created this situation. Word on the street is that he owes First American — his only underwriter — tens of millions in unremitted premiums. There is an active lawsuit between Mercury and First American. Google the complaint, it’s all there. Basically, First American refused to continue to underwrite Mercury, and I would imagine that has a lot to do with the sudden cease of operations. For those who don’t know what they’re talking about, i.e. Munchkin, do your homework and learn about the industry and how it works. Jim, a comment: Jerry’s belief that revenue is king, hence his egregious recruiting practices and subsequent lawsuits is the reason why Mercury has failed. Revenue is only a piece of the puzzle. If we only value revenue first, then we perpetuate all of the unsavory practices that have turned the title insurance industry into the problem that it has become.

I was at work when the plant manager came to tell us just after 5 pm that we were closed as of 5 PM. Just last Monday, he had to lay off an examiner and we were all going to have to take a 10% pay cut starting August first. We started packing and calling our coworkers to let them know to come up and pack their desks. The plant manager walked around getting everyone’s numbers and saying “stay together. Stay in contact. We will hopefully all be together in the near future” The next day, three title companies showed up to a meeting and wanted all of us at our current rate of pay. We should start work Monday.

Mercury Companies is pretty much saying they will not be paying us for the work we did between July 15- July 29th. Not planning on paying us for the vacation time not taken either. A coworker’s last two paychecks were paper because she was switching banks. Both paychecks bounced. Mercury Companies was saying they were going to cover all the fees. I am guessing that isn’t happening either. It will take her quite a while to dig her way out of that .

Basically what happened was, even though Houston was getting a big portion of the market share and Texas was doing well (united title of Texas) the companies in the other states with poorer markets were hemorrhaging money. They lost their credit line and closed everywhere but their home base in Colorado.

I am not following what Cheech is saying because First American was our biggest underwriter. One of our CEO’s is still on the board at FATCO.

Here is the email we received Monday evening:

From: Jim Hilbun - UTT
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 5:50 PM
To: UTT - Division Presidents; UTT - Department Managers; UTT - All Fee Attorney Employees
Subject: UTT Ceases Operation - Urgent Message

It is with deep regret that I must tell you that as of close of business Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 United Title of Texas has been closed by its parent company Mercury Companies of Colorado. Mercury is closing all of its companies outside of CO, which also includes AZ, CA, OR, and NV. As of this moment, all employees are terminated and should either remove their personal items now or return Wed. morning for removal. No files are to be removed or copied in any manner. Files with money in them should also remain as they are now. This is a difficult thing to ask of you but as of this moment you have no legal cause to be in the file since you are no longer and employee of UTT.

This event was brought about by Mercury running out of capital to support their operations. They failed to meet the requirements of their creditors thus losing their line of credit. We became aware of this on Friday but were not notified until 4:15 today of our closing.

Your personnel, insurance, and payroll questions should go to Sheri Gustad at 303-892-7883 in CO.
I will be in the corporate office Wed. morning and will answer questions to the best of my ability.
I am sorry to lose a team as great as you have been. I pray we will cross paths again in the near future.

Sincerely,
Jim

Jim Hilbun
United Title of Texas
Southwest Regional President
Chairman/CEO
512-340-4100 Office
866-209-8346 Fax

It’s just a matter of time before the Colorado division comes crashing down. This company is a financial disaster!

PatrickG.

Call a First American Rep, go to tlta.com

They can refer you to closing office.

Cheech, you are correct. Thanks. The industy is being re-invented,

Where is Greggo?

Other than examiners, title employess (including escrow officers) are a dime a dozen.

Thanks for the replies. For me as a customer, It is without saying that this could have been heandled in another way. If Mercury knew this was coming, they could have stopped accepting Title work. That would have mitigated a LOT of aggrivation. Everyone understands the economic times are bad right now, but Mercury has just made them worse for a lot of people…including the way the handled this. I have a moving van on the way to Texas from NJ that I cant stop now. As far as I know my close will happen a few days to a week later.

I am one of the many in DFW without a job. We will not be receiving paychecks, expense checks, etc. Now some of the prinipals of United Title are trying to slap together a deal to reopen under another name. BEWARE, same locations, same people, eventually THE SAME PROBLEM. Please keep in mind that the staff had no part in what has happened and will need their customers support to move forward and find jobs. I can’t beleive this has happened. We did not see this coming. The company had recently made some cutbacks but not significant enough in this market to warrant concern of the company shutting down. In fact the owners of Mercury Companies, Jerry Hauptman was recently in DFW to “rally the troops” after the closing of Alliance Title in California. I suppose the rumors about the owner and his upper managment staff are correct. They must be CROOKS! Any ideas about how to receive the pay that the CROOKS have basically stolen from us?

First,

orisleuth, you are an *****. The basic manual of title insurance in Texas is an extremely complicated manual, which contains all procedual rules. Examiners are trained to look for a few things, and are the largest source of claims for a title company. Title examiners are typically uneducated, brought in with no formal education and taught basic functions, be it single seat or production. Also, your spell check seems not to work.

United had three or four presidents in the three years they had operations here. Quality companies have had one the last fifteen to twenty years. If you research, there are two that fit this description.

United’s past presidents had histories of failure. It rolls from the top.

Escrow officers are the meat and potato’s of the Title business. I know, my wife was one who lost her job on Tuesday. 95% of her customers are following her whereever she goes. They have called daily to see if there is anything they can do for her. She will be employed within the week. As for the state/division presidents in Texas, the one i know is an outstanding man and did everything in his power to prevent this fiasco. If he could have put together another deal, we would have followed him there without a doubt.

Also, my wife spoke with a lady at Mercury coporate today and was informed that no further paychecks would be paid.

UTTCO was going to have the best month in its history in Texas, so I guess we have to lay the blame at poor management in Colorado and bad times in states like CA/OR/UT/NV or AZ. Mercury left 300 closings on the table when they shut down Texas…somewhere near $500,000 in revenue. What ******!

Anyway, the Escrow Officers will land somewhere with no problems. Good luck to all! Our prayers are with you.

No way 500K in premium, they are primarily fee offices, just 2 directs.

Division “Presidents in Dallas were all all spares that were let go form other companies, good thing blogs ae anonymous.

300 closings, 500,000.00 in revenue, 190 employees. Wow, do the math. That is not a model of a sucessful company. 500K in revenue annualized woud not be in the top 70 title companies in Texas.

Tom,
If the Presidents in Dallas were spares that were let go from other companies, wonder why they were expected to run a division? Wonder why they think they can slap together another deal and be successful? Again, all I can say to anyone looking for industry jobs, I would STAY AWAY! The rumor is that they are going to move back into the existing office spaces, put a new BRAND SIGN on the door, and try to pick up where they left off. Most of the people I worked with are committed individuals and very good at what they do, but I worry, if they continue to buy into the vision of the Division President’s. I wish them all luck and hope they can weather the storm. To any consumer’s that are in this mix, BEWARE!!!!! Bottom line is those of us who are unemployed because of this are upset, but the realtors, buyer’s, seller’s and lender’s who cannot get their deals closed, money from the company, are really in a BIND! The Mercury Companies should have given us a day or two to finish out our business. I would have happily stayed and finished my deals out without pay. I JUST DON’T GET IT!!

Truth

The $500k was left for the last 2 days of the month *****.

The closing of Lenders First Choice came 1 day after closing for me. My sellers mortgage has not been paid and no one has answers. I have a mortgage payment due on September 1st though, and the seller still holds the keys to my new house! What to do?

Don’t know about anyone else, but LFC employees are being told they won’t be paid for their last 2 weeks of work because “LFC has no money” (told this by Mercury Companies). Aside from the fact that, per CA state law that is illegal, it is unethical and Hauptman will have a huge issue on his hands. It’s so sad, LFC was a great company to work for, the employees loved their jobs and worked hard. To Diane, I feel for you, I really do. It killed us to leave files sitting there knowing people’s homes were at stake. A disgrace.

I have worked for LFC in Frisco for 3 years. Up until last year, they weren’t doing bad at all. Last year seems to be when things really went downhill. With the layoffs that happened last year and the people who left due to being scared, the Frisco office went from over 275 people down to 75. I got laid off in March of 2007, came back under a sister company, then got laid off again on 6/19/08. We were back up to approx. 90 employees the beginning of this year, but that number had dropped significantly by the time LFC shut down last week.

They also closed down All Reverse Transactions in California, which was a division of LFC. That was a pretty bad deal too, as all of the ART clients were senior citizens over 65 years old. I feel really bad for them as well.

And, to feed the gossip mill, here is another nice tidbit of information. LFC wasn’t losing money. They weren’t making billions or anything, but they weren’t in the hole either. The VP of the company, before being notified that it was shutting down, had found a buyer for LFC…and was told that it didn’t matter because bankruptcy papers had already been filed. No final paychecks or vacation pay have been made. Also, somebody who had quit about 2 weeks prior and hadn’t cashed their check yet…tried to cash the check after the shut down and it bounced.

Even weirder, people are being told that if they file they can expect to be paid unemployment. It remains to be seen if that actually happens, but personally, my unemployment hasn’t been stopped…I’m still receiving it.

Cold to blame Jerry Hauptman ! This is the world we live in. lets recognize that Murcury co is family based and has been in business for 60+ years. It is awful everyone in this world thinks only of themselves. In the same boat but gally ! Don’t be so cruel. Management was always wonderful in my opinion.

Megen…they could not hold on…bull…they held on long enough to get the money and run and leave everyone else in the cold. If that’s how they thought of their staff, you need to experience good management.

Chili, there will be no COBRA, as was discovered by one of my LFC - Simi co-workers today. We also found out that Fidelity has now acquired Mercury Companies. Does Fidelity know the amount of money that Mercury owes a lot of former employees? We’re all in the middle of filing wage claims for the Simi office, and the state has assigned a specific person to investigate all claims relating to Mercury. Aside from the Alliance complaints from last December, you now have LFC in Simi, ART in Rocklin and Irvine, plus all of the Financial Title offices… there’s a lot of claims out there in CA and I’m sure there will be a ton in Texas, as well. Not to mention the Longwood office in Florida and the offices in Denver. It’s a big huge mess. Yes, as I understand it, Bill Moody (LFC President) was trying to get LFC sold before Mercury did this, but unfortunately it didn’t happen. LFC was an AWESOME place to work, I was there for 4 years and never unhappy. I was scared and sad a lot over the last year due to the layoffs, but never an unhappy employee and I never blamed the “powers that be” for having to lay people off, it’s just the market. We were spoiled, I tell ya. Bill was in tears having to gather everyone up and tell us to go. LFC was doing fairly well and we all really felt we were going to pull thru, the month of July was picking up again and there was hope. Then BOOM, Mercury shut us down. If it was because of a poor market I would understand. But it seems as though we were shut down just to payoff another lawsuit that they lost… and now they’re not paying anyone. Shameful.

CONFIRMED, Fidelity did purchase Mercury Companies Colorado division of offices for an UNDISCLOSED AMOUNT OF MONEY. Jerry Hauptman would have the money to pay us all if he FREAKING CARED.

Svaldi, Aldo” is the person that is writing the boilerplate articles for the Denver Post.

“I’ve gotten a few e-mails on this and am planning to write something up. Where you can help me is finding employees willing to go on the record, maybe in different states. Do you know of any state labor departments going after Mercury. I’m about to send their PR person a query about why employees haven’t been paid given that the sale to Mercury must have generated some proceeds for the Hauptmans. I’ll read those links you sent. Thanks, Aldo Svaldi”

I own a small business in San Antonio, TX that serviced 6 branches of the United Title in San Antonio. This was our biggest customer, and now they are gone we are owed a ton of money.

I didn’t see this coming and now we don’t know how to handle it. If I get attorney it’s going to cost a min of $5,000. Is there any assets to even go after?

We can’t afford to looses more money, but I don’t want to walk away from all that’s owed to us if we can collect something.

anotherunemployed,
I have heard from some of the rest of us unemployed by United in Texas that the plan is for them to file bankruptcy and word from attorney’s in Texas are that we would probably be unable to get anything owed us. As well, the cost of retaining legal counsel would probably be more than we would ever get. I am sure that is what Hauptman is counting on. THIS TOTALLY SUCKS! Wonder what he mad on the deal with Fidelity.

to all DFW Texas United Title employees. Candy Evans the reporter is going to help us get some publicity on this and help us maybe get our pay. If you are interested in speaking with her, please respond to me. She wants to sit down with us and get the story and guide us through the process.

To all the UTT employees that Mercury Company blindsided I feel your pain and wish the best for all of you!

I was laid off last December from one of the UTTCO San Antonio branch offices. For some reason I never was really upset about it. Now I feel blessed to have got out when I did. I had 15 years experience in the title industry as an escrow assistant and back-up closer and had never been laid off from a job until then.

Based on the way this all went down (the closing of the company, bankruptcy and the way the employees were treated) I wonder if the Mercury Company executives were trained by the Enron executives. When I was hired by UTT San Antonio I was told what deep pockets Mercury Company had and as it turned out all they had was high dollar furniture and no pockets!!!

Good luck to all of you!!

Please contact me via email.