Two new commercial real estate brokerages have been placed on Fannie Mae’s blacklist.
Sevenstone Capital and Eastern Union are temporarily halted from doing business with Fannie Mae. The agencies are investigating Jeff Seidenfeld, a founding partner of Sevenstone Capital, according to sources.
Hiten Samtani of The Promote first reported the news about Sevenstone and Eastern Union on X.
Sevenstone and Eastern Union are the latest players to be caught in the cross hairs of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Both have heavy presence in Brooklyn and New Jersey.
The move comes as the government-sponsored agencies are widening their investigation into brokerages, title insurers and investors over certain loans with falsified financials. The crackdown has led to criminal charges brought against real estate investors, including Boruch Drillman and Aron Puretz.
“Eastern Union takes the quality of loans being sent to lenders very carefully,” said Abraham Bergman, co-founder of Eastern Union, in a statement. “We believe we are being dragged into this by the actions of others no longer employed by Eastern Union and we fully expect this to get cleared up.”
Bergman founded Eastern Union with Ira Zlotowitz, who now runs Gparency.
“I do not have any information about any inside agency information,” said Ben Lieberman, an attorney for Eastern Union.
But Lieberman adds, “We have no information that any individual broker at Eastern, nor Eastern itself, has had any fraud attributed to it.”
Multiple sources told The Real Deal that the issues stem from loans brokered by Sevenstone’s brokers while employed at Eastern Union.
The brokers had left Eastern Union in 2020 and launched their own shop, Sevenstone Capital. The agency’s focus is on Sevenstone’s involvement in numerous deals, including with Moshe Silber of Rhodium Capital, according to sources. Silber was banned from real estate and has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.
Prosecutors allege Silber and his business partner Fred Schulman used fake documents to dupe Fannie Mae and their lender to obtain a loan for a rental property in Cincinnati that was larger than they otherwise would have received. Silber is awaiting sentencing.
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The agencies are investigating Seidenfeld individually, according to sources.
Sevenstone did not return a request to comment.