Dallas Area Mortgage Broker Stuns Seminar with Revelation
By Charlie Rasmussen

Conference organizers moved quickly to mute Pennington's divisive image.

DALLAS - According to reports, more than one hundred mortgage professionals were horrified when area mortgage broker, Louise Pennington, publicly claimed that her motivation for originating small commercial loans was the potential to earn large sums of money.

The shocking comment, which occurred at a Dallas Radisson Hotel, halted an education seminar on commercial mortgage lending as the stunned crowd flooded from the hotel ballroom after learning of their colleague's voracious appetite for additional income.

A former part-time real estate agent and stay-at-home mom, Pennington, 42, enrolled in a Business Building Seminar offered exclusively by commercial lending giant, Lone Star Funding, to learn the basics of its product and how to source and close small commercial loans.

"I didn't take this job for the personal development or spiritual growth," Pennington retorted when questioned about her room-clearing remark. "I'm in it for the money; and any broker that tells you otherwise is lying through their $30,000 porcelain veneers."

According to witnesses, the incident occurred shortly after 9 a.m. when Lone Star Funding seminar leader, Chuck Rivers, randomly asked audience members why they had decided to become mortgage brokers.

Many of the seminar attendees fled the hotel immediately, while others feverishly called family members from their mobile telephones, reassuring their loved ones that they would be returning home safely later that afternoon.

Despite reassurances, terrified brokers refused to re-enter the convention site.

Texas Association of Mortgage Brokers president, Cyrus "Cy" Hightower, was busy preparing lunch for impoverished men and women in the soup kitchen at Our Mother of Sorrows when he heard the disturbing news. After concluding the ten to two o'clock shift and discarding his hairnet, he issued the following statement: "The TAMB has always been about bringing mortgage brokers together for the betterment of our neighborhoods and small business communities. Today we must be stronger than ever to support those whose lives and families have been affected by this terrible tragedy."

Hightower went on to urge local shopkeepers to turn a deaf ear to Pennington's "greed soaked advances," instructing them to politely decline the broker's offer to assist them with commercial financing, and further recommended that they reject her interest in purchasing their merchandise.

The latter portion of his advice created an unexpected backlash in "Main Street" sections of the Dallas/Fort Worth area as merchants began bombarding not just Pennington, but all of her Lone Star cohorts with communications advertising special sales, coupons, and rebates reserved exclusively for mortgage professionals.

"I've never been so busy," exclaimed Clarence Bartram, owner of Bartram's Boot Shack in Carrollton, TX. "Ever since that windbag Hightower tried to keep mortgage brokers away from self-employed guys like me, even my high-end exotic skins like gator and ostrich have been 'walking out the door' quicker than all get-out!"

One person who didn't share this windfall was Pennington's youngest son, Tyler.

"Now that mom has a big, fancy job, the house is empty when I get home from school," lamented the twelve-year-old boy. "At dinner time my father and I are lucky to get a Hot Pocket while mom is out having her leftovers wrapped in a tin foil swan. It's like we don't even know her anymore. At least that's what dad says when he drinks beer in his workshop all night."

Despite her family's unhappiness, Mrs. Pennington refuses to deviate from her path of immense wealth and self-indulgence. When asked if she would ever consider designating a portion of her income to more charitable causes, Pennington replied, "I've got a twelve year-old and a husband at home, both of whom are hitched to this ol' lady's gravy train. If they don't qualify as charity cases, then I don't know what does."