A loan officer couple under fire in a poaching lawsuit is suing their former lender for allegedly scraping their private emails to make their case. 

Ashley and Christopher Hoehn sued Stockton Mortgage this week in federal court for computer fraud, adding another layer to a legal battle between the parties. The Alabama-based couple, now at Novus Home Mortgage, are two of 16 individuals named in Stockton's poaching and theft of trade secrets complaint in Alabama, which it filed last year following their mass exodus.

Stockton is accusing its former workers of coordinating with Novus to divert active and prospective clients to the competitor, in violation of their non-disclosure and non-solicitation agreements. That complaint includes dozens of purported emails of Stockton employees using their personal accounts to coordinate business with Novus, while still employed at the lender.

Novus has denied the accusations in court, while an attorney for the ex-workers recently moved to dismiss some of the civil counts and defendants from the case. 

In the new suit, the Hoehns said they did not give Stockton permission to comb through their private emails, which they logged into on their company-issued laptops. The published emails contained sensitive, unredacted personal financial information, which the couple argues could expose them to future harm. 

Neither the attorneys for the parties in each case, nor the companies involved, provided comments for this article by deadline. 

Suspicions after low credit pulls

The Kentucky-based Stockton said it became suspicious of its former employees when it noticed credit pulls for a few offices under one manager's purview were declining. It then discovered the subterfuge by reading the employees' emails, according to the suit. The initial lawsuit included 51 attachments of its workers' alleged emails. 

One of the purported emails shows Christopher Hoehn telling a borrower that Stockton was being acquired by Novus, and for that customer to begin working with the competitor.

The named defendants began to resign in succession last summer and join Novus, and their departures forced Stockton to close two branches in Alabama, it claims. 

The plaintiff firm has secured some relief in its lawsuit, as the sides agreed to a preliminary injunction barring the defendants from soliciting Stockton customers and using any transferred work data.

Forensic files

The Hoehns, who worked at Stockton from 2024 to 2025, claim their bosses accessed their private emails before and after they left the business. The LOs acknowledged signing agreements that their employer wouldn't guarantee privacy on the work laptops. 

"Nothing in the materials reviewed or signed by Mrs. Hoehn advised her that she was giving Stockton or the Doe defendants authorization to affirmatively access any personal email account," her attorney wrote. 

The LOs claim they used their Gmail accounts to discuss family finances, medical appointments and to speak with their children. One of the emails in question regards Christopher Hoehn discussing a loan with a bank, the lawsuit said. 

When Stockton included their emails in its lawsuit, the couple said they examined the metadata, and found information suggesting the company used a forensic tool to access their messages. Stockton claimed to have used a third-party data loss prevention service, and the sides now dispute when the couple turned in their work laptops. 

The companies are similarly-sized competitors in the mortgage space, according to the latest available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Stockton reported $1.9 billion in origination volume in 2024, while Novus, the lending arm of Wisconsin-based Ixonia Bank, generated $2 billion in loan volume that year. 

Stockton in 2022 was accused of poaching 30 employees from a Michigan lender, in a case the sides resolved shortly thereafter, according to federal court records.