Mike Kortas and Anthony Casa, two of the most prominent personalities in the mortgage brokerage space, have put aside a longstanding feud and reached an agreement for NEXA Lending to acquire UMortgage. But they have also recently mended — or deepened — another relationship through their status with the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME).
Casa, who founded AIME in 2017, took a leave of absence from the organization in the summer of 2020 after sending videos to Rocket Mortgage‘s Austin Niemiec that included comments of a sexual nature about Niemiec’s wife, Theresa. The videos were distributed to other industry executives, leading Niemiec to sue Casa and Casa to officially step down in October 2020. The case was later dismissed with prejudice in April 2022.
Kortas, meanwhile, cut ties with AIME in 2022, saying then that he believed the trade group failed to adequately address bullying and online attacks within the broker community. He also said AIME rebuffed his request to establish an ethics committee and refused to provide its bylaws.
AIME, which was then run by Katie Fisher (nee Sweeney) and Marc Summers — who were appointed after Casa announced his leave of absence — denied the claims back in 2022. The association claimed it had established a five-member ethics committee that year, and that its bylaws were being revised. Kortas was also cut off from his VIP membership, while NEXA‘s loan officers could decide individually whether to remain AIME members.
Kortas in the past accused Casa of misrepresenting UMortgage’s recruiting practices, claiming Casa said the company recruited only from retail lenders when Kortas believed its LOs had come from other brokerages.
“I just didn’t want to fight good people anymore,” Kortas said in an interview with HousingWire as he reflected on his decision to cut ties. “The whole ‘brokers are better’ movement, drawing the line in the sand with brokers and retail — it wasn’t helping brokers grow anymore.”
Kortas said his disagreements with Casa escalated on social media and their relationship deteriorated to the point that they blocked each other’s accounts and stopped speaking. He also acknowledged that their public disputes, combined with factionalism around AIME, contributed to an online mob mentality.
Resetting the relationship
A turning point came when Todd Bitter, the former chief sales officer of UMortgage who joined NEXA as national sales director in January, attempted to broker peace and initiated a meeting between Casa and Kortas.
That detente eventually opened the door to renewed conversations between the duo, with Kortas flying to Philadelphia to connect in person with Casa.
“We got through the personal stuff,” Kortas said. “We realized that neither one of us cared about the old stuff, about the old rifts. The world cares more than we care. Everybody else likes to talk about it. We don’t care.”
Despite the layered history, Kortas said NEXA has reestablished a strong working relationship with AIME under current chairman and CEO Jonathon Haddad, who took on the role in January 2024 after Fisher stepped down to become the CEO of the Broker Action Coalition (BAC).
Haddad said that repairing AIME’s relationship with NEXA was top of mind after he took on the leadership role.
“I flew out to NEXA Fest on my own dime and just wanted to connect and show them that, ‘Hey, I’m here. I don’t know what this is going to look like. I have no idea if you’re even interested, but I’m here,’” he told HousingWire.
“We started discussing the value we could bring each other. Many of our members are very new to the mortgage space [and] teaching them the basics has been a big win, and I believe that’s where Mike Kortas and I align very much.”
Kortas agreed, clarifying that he has been reunited with AIME “for a long time” and is “widely accepted back into the community.” He noted that NEXA recently signed an agreement under which the brokerage will pay for AIME memberships for all of its roughly 4,100 loan officers.
“We had 100 or so members before. Now we have 4,100 members,” Kortas said.
And as it happens, Casa is back at the organization too, a fact that he teased on the HousingWire Daily podcast.
“For me, I’m really interested in being more involved,” he said. “I’ve been out of AIME for five or six years since I departed; I’ve offered my services and am nominated to serve in the director of membership role, which is voted on in the next 30 days.”
In a separate conversation, Casa confirmed that he rejoined the association in 2026. “I’m a huge believer in Jonathon Haddad and their team; they’ve done an amazing job making AIME a best-in-class trade association.”
“As it currently stands, he is an annual VIP member. That’s where he’s at – just like the other 160 VIP members we have,” Haddad confirmed to HousingWire. “If you can help hold somebody accountable to being a better man or woman, to me, it’s like, why wouldn’t we try something like that?”
Kortas and Casa recently joined Haddad on Facebook Live to discuss the acquisition and their patchy relationship over the years.
“If you talked to somebody about this even six months ago, they would say there’s no way this would happen,” Haddad said during the video. “It’s not like you guys were giving each other friendship bracelets for the last couple of years.”
When asked about how the AIME community feels about Casa’s return, Haddad said, “there are people that have forgiven him, and there are people that still haven’t, and that’s OK. But we can’t pretend that the people who have forgiven him don’t hold any merit.”
