Criminal Justice
NY Mortgage Lawyer Killed in Parking Lot Shooting
Posted Oct 22, 2008 8:13 AM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A Long Island mortgage lawyer who recently began making high-interest loans was shot and killed yesterday in a restaurant parking lot.
The 44-year-old James DiMartino, who practiced in Holbrook, N.Y., was shot in the head “in broad daylight,” the New York Post reports.
DiMartino’s longtime friend, James Donovan, told the Post he doesn’t think the shooting was random. "I think he expanded [business] in the wrong direction," he said.
Donovan said DiMartino recently began making high-interest loans to people unable to get traditional loans. The lawyer was found shot next to his Lexus sport utility vehicle, Newsday reports.
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Comments
Tony Soprano
Oct 22, 2008 9:36 AM CST
“DiMartino recently began making high-interest loans to people unable to get traditional loans.”
In other words, he was a loan shark.
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Mondo
Oct 22, 2008 12:21 PM CST
No. Lon sharks have been in the business for a long time. Dimartino was a loan guppy.
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Kiwi25
Oct 23, 2008 8:24 AM CST
This is standard practice! If your credit is poor and the banks take a bigger risk loaning money to you, you pay. This is not uncommon or unreputable, it’s the price you pay for not having good credit, period!
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Ellen Barshevsky
Oct 23, 2008 1:23 PM CST
This is TERIBLE. Lawyers should NOT be involved in the lending business.
By boyfriend thinks he may have gotten involved with the WRONG people, the ones that break your knees.
Plus, he had a LEXUS, which can make him a robbery target, if he was loning money from his truck.
I think a LAWYER must practice law, and leave the lending to BANKS.
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mondo
Oct 23, 2008 3:26 PM CST
Noone who needs hard money is gonna shoot the guy who’s getting it for them. It must have been a client whose deal had closed aready and was PO’d about paying 20% or Dimartino was into other more sinister stuff like drugs, etc.
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Donald
Oct 24, 2008 6:35 AM CST
I don’t think this had anything to do with one particular loan, I think it has to do with his cutting in on a lucrative business for organized crime. He cut in, they took him out. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he received at least one warning about his involvement in this slimy arm of the “lending” business. In thinking about it, are our modern lending institutions that far above the sliminess of what DiMartino was doing? Current events say ‘no’.
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JME
Oct 24, 2008 10:00 AM CST
#6 is probably right. You don’t cut in on someone else’s turf. Out west, we’ve relaxed the rules, much harder for organized crime because anybody can set up for payday loans and car title loans. Every gas station has a casino, so even the Indians are unable to corner a market.
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davis cohen
Oct 24, 2008 12:26 PM CST
what gives the legal proffesion a bad name is not loans but rather lawyers that can’t spell correctly . terrible, not terible, ms. barshevsky.
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Avon
Oct 24, 2008 12:45 PM CST
Davis Cohen (#9), you tread on dangerous turf.
It’s so easy to look like a foole if you criticize the spelling of a professional who made one error in a word, but in doing so you make two errors in a word yourself. “Profession” isn’t even that hard a word!
On the other hand, you’ve surely brightened a lot of people’s day.
It’s not only safer, but harmless, to just drop the subject. Looking good may be important, but the murder story probably proves that doing good is much, much more important.
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The Proofreader
Oct 24, 2008 5:52 PM CST
Davis Cohen—you are busted.
Firstly, you should know that we no longer waste time criticizing Ellen B.‘s spelling. That is simply passe.
Secondly, if you take it upon yourself to pass judgment on the spelling of others, please do so only if you are able to use proper spelling and punctuation. Obviously, you are not. Have you ever heard of using a capital letter to start a sentence? Do you have any idea how properly use a comma or a semi-colon?
Thirdly, as pointed out by Avon (#9), there is only one “F” and two “S"s in profession.
Lastly, your critique of Ellen’s spelling seems to have missed (1) the typo in “By boyfriend”; and (2) the typo in “loning”. Were you being kind, or did you miss it?
If you plan to be a proofreader, do a better job, or, better yet, leave it to a “proffesional”.
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Edward C Weber
Oct 25, 2008 8:11 AM CST
Anyone in favor of limiting interest on loans to no more than 5% above savings account interest rates? Seems to me to solve a multitude of problems.
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DCEsq
Oct 25, 2008 8:19 AM CST
While these spelling debates may be more interesting than the comments on the article, it should be pointed out that this is an utterly irresponsible piece of reporting by the ABA. Without the slightest information on the identity of the assailant or whether police had any leads, the article simply uses whatever information came to light (that budding mortgage career) and creates an implication that finds no support in facts: the lawyer was shot (possibly by a client) for making high-interest loans. More importantly, how is this “criminal justice” news? On the basis of this example, I would expect to see a recitation of every lawyer’s murder in the country. But we don’t see this. Instead we see the reporting of a lawyer who was making high-interest loans and it so conveniently happened to be that said loans took place during the current mortgage crisis. This is cheap reporting at its cheapest.
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Al Tidom
Oct 25, 2008 5:31 PM CST
Poor SOB. Probably never knew what hit him. I wonder if it was mafia related? Does anyone know?
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dave
Oct 28, 2008 3:16 PM CST
#11.
No. That would a “socialist” thing to do. If you have a habit of defaulting on your loans, declaring bankruptcy and repeating the cycle, and you want to borrow money from me, I should be able to charge you whatever, in my mind justifies the huge risk I’m taking? Of course, you can just decide not to borrow from me. Nobody should ever be able to tell someone else what they can charge for lending their money. Banks don’t charge lower rates because the government says so…the market “told” them what to charge. If you set up some law limiting the amount interest chargable on “crap loans” those loans will just go away, and then you’ll have a whole lot of people who can’t borrow money to: buy a house, get an education, get a car, get new clothes for a new job, etc. Basically, things needed (or at least very helpful) if you ever want to better your situation in life. So, too much protection can actually hurt you more than no protection. Kind of like guarding your house with a nuke.
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dave
Oct 28, 2008 3:19 PM CST
Wow…I just read my mess of a post and noticed several egregious typos. I just wanted to apologize to all the eyes I offended with my semi-stream-of-consciousness rant. However, I don’t apologize for offended sensibilities, etc.
Cheers!
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