It's bad enough to find yourself in financial trouble, falling behind on your mortgage payments, but to be victimized at that point by a fraudulent mortgage modification business makes the whole situation exponentially worse.

For some victims of just such a scam, there was good news this week. The Federal Trade Commission mailed out 1,410 refund checks to customers of a mortgage modification/foreclosure "rescue" scam that was called Home Assure LLC.

What Home Assure did was charge customers a big fee up front, in exchange for using its alleged "influence" with the mortgage lenders. The scammers told people that they could get a favorable mortgage modification, or even stop a foreclosure. Needless to say, the company took the customers' money but had no actual ability or desire to stop foreclosures or modify mortgage terms. Legitimate Fort Lauderdale mortgage options attorneys see victims of this type of scam coming to their offices on a regular basis.

In this case, though, the FTC was able to get a settlement order that imposed a monetary judgment on Home Assure that would allow the customers to get their money back. The order also bans Home Assure from selling mortgage modification or foreclosure defense services.

The FTC has been able to return $2.3 million to the defrauded customers, which means the victims should be getting a full refund. Checks from the FTC will vary in amount according to how much the customers paid the scammers.

The FTC had one more piece of advice for the people getting refunds: don't believe anyone who claims that they are from the FTC and that a fee needs to be paid, or information given out, in order to cash the refund checks. There are scammers out there who are trying to defraud people with that claim, too.

Source: FTC "FTC Returns $2.3 Million to Consumers; Mortgage Foreclosure Rescue Scam Victims Receive Full Refunds" 4/15/2011