Residents in Connecticut and across the country whose home is facing foreclosure have a tendency to feel desperate and willing to take any measures possible in order to stay in their house. These measures might even include turning to less-than-legitimate organizations that advertise their services online. However, troubled homeowners might do best to stay clear of organizations of this nature as a United States government agency recently identified 200 companies touting foreclosure scams online and shut them down.

Keying in on peoples' desperation, these scams were being advertised on search engine web sites used by essentially everyone -- Google, Yahoo! and Bing. The Office of Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Release Program sniffed them out and brought them to an end. But that does not mean a fair share of these scam artists are not still floating around in cyberspace, so keep a watchful eye.

The nature of theses scams varies. Some organizations instruct homeowners to pay their mortgage through them or to transfer their deed and other personal information. Others will tell a homeowner to stop paying their mortgage all together and that the organization would grant them a lower mortgage for a fee. Some even appear to have a lot of credibility, claiming that they are tied in with a government organization.

In reality, no one has to pay for a mortgage modification and homeowners can seek free assistance from counselors with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The popular search engines are doing their part to weed out these thieves as well. Microsoft suspended 400 advertisers connected with these practices and Google scratched 500 advertisers who were also contributing to the problem.

Source: The Sun News, "Homeowners should watch for foreclosure scams online," Adva Saldinger, Nov. 25, 2011