He called it a once-in-a-lifetime chance - his old employer calls it something else
A top US mortgage lender says one of its own executives quietly built rival software on company time, then moved to sell it.
Freedom Mortgage Corporation made that claim in federal court in Michigan on June 18, 2026, suing Brian Sweet, the senior vice president it brought on in 2025 to run its software team. Freedom wants a judge to halt Sweet's activity while the core dispute heads to arbitration.
The story the filing tells starts with a hire. In June 2025, Freedom made Sweet its Senior Vice President of Product Management, handed him a team of developers, and gave him a look at the company's roadmap for next-generation loan technology. That roadmap, the complaint says, included a 25-page strategic guide for a new loan-origination system, a 31-page requirements document, and a 7-page document built on Freedom executives' "decades of experience in the industry."
A quick translation for the non-engineers. A loan-origination system, or LOS, is the software a lender uses to carry a loan from application to closing. Two pieces matter here: a product-and-pricing engine, which sets loan pricing and rate locks, and a document-generation tool, which produces compliant closing packages. Sweet's job, the filing says, was to help build Freedom's versions.
Instead, Freedom alleges, he built his own. Over roughly three months, while still on Freedom's payroll, Sweet created competing pricing-engine and document-generation tools, according to the suit. The filing says he leaned on AI code-generation software and worked with former colleagues then at United Wholesale Mortgage, a Freedom rival, to do it. It also claims he was consulting for BeSmartee, another competitor, helping it develop the same kind of customer-facing tools Freedom was paying him to build.
Then came the exit. On March 10, 2026, the filing says, Sweet told Freedom he was leaving and that he had software he was in the process of selling to other lenders for more than $1 million. He resigned the next day, calling it an opportunity that "could be once in a lifetime." Freedom's read is blunter: the opportunity, it says, was software that belongs to the company.
That ownership claim rests on a contract. Freedom says Sweet signed a Protective Covenants Agreement on his first day that blocked outside mortgage work, banned competing activity, and, through a "works made for hire" clause, gave Freedom rights to anything he created on the job. The company says it demanded the software and its confidential files back, and that Sweet refused.
The suit stacks up seven counts: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and loyalty, trade-secret misappropriation under federal law and two state statutes, conversion, and unjust enrichment. Freedom describes the alleged conduct as a "willful and malicious" misuse of its confidential information and is asking for an injunction, compensatory and punitive damages, and attorney's fees.
Set the personalities aside and there is a real lesson for lenders. Proprietary loan technology has become the asset rivals most want to copy, and AI tools now let one capable developer build a working platform in months, not years. Freedom's playbook - cut system access the instant an executive resigns, then go to court fast - is one other shops may want on the shelf.
A caution to close on. Everything above is an allegation. Sweet has not filed a response, no court has ruled on any of it, and no judge has found that he did anything wrong.
