A Rye Brook mortgage broker is suing a former sales manager and a rival brokerage for allegedly stealing clients.
Quintessential Mortgage Group is demanding $2 million from Timmy Mai and AMS Mortgage Services Inc., in a complaint filed on July 24 in Westchester Supreme Court.
“The defendants violated a host of state and federal statutes and banking regulations,” the complaint states, “that have exposed [Quintessential] to civil liability while at the same time depriving it of significant revenue.”
“AMS categorically denies the allegations,” Executive Vice President Michael Kovary stated in an email, and “rejects all allegations that it acted in violation of state and federal compliance laws.”
Quintessential was founded in 2012, according to a state business registration record. It is headed and primarily owned by David Linn.
AMS is based in Fountain Valley, California, has branch offices in New Jersey, and is licensed in New York.
In 2022, Quintessential says, it hired Timmy Mai, of Syosset, Nassau County, as a sales manager. Sixteen months later, Quintessential agreed to pay Mai a $74,000 signing bonus and buy out a contract with his previous employer for $126,000, according to the complaint. Mai agreed to repay the entire $200,000 if he failed to complete three years of continuous employment.
Quintessential says AMS hired Mai this past March.
Thereafter, the complaint states, Mai began to use his wife, Vivian Lin, as a conduit to divert loans to AMS.
Mai allegedly originated new mortgage loans for AMS, while employed by Quintessential, and created fraudulent loan disclosure forms to make it appear as if AMS had originated the deals. Then he allegedly purged data from the company’s computers, “so that the illicit conduct could not be uncovered and so that [Quintessential] would be unable to contact their clients directly.”
Kovary stated that AMS has not hired Mai and that Mai did not transmit Quintessential’s confidential information to his firm.
Quintessential accused Mai of breach of contract and is seeking repayment of the $200,000 signing bonus and contract buyout. It is seeking $2 million from Mai and AMS for alleged tortious interference with a contract and aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty.
Efforts to find contact information for Mai and his wife, Lin, who also is named as a defendant, to ask for side of the story, were unsuccessful.
Kovary stated that “AMS will vigorously defend, as will the individual defendants.”
