The unabated foreclosure crisis has spawned soaring mortgage relief scams and related complaints from consumers, according to law enforcement and consumer protection authorities. The most telling statistic was released by the Federal Trade Commission yesterday in its annual review, which reported that nearly 1 million fraud and identity theft complaints were filed last year. In the category of “mortgage modification/foreclosure relief,” only 1 complaint was filed in 2008. That number rocketed to 7,927 last year, the FTC said. And those likely represent a fraction of all such scams or other issues with foreclosure rescue services, since more cases than not go unreported.
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