If you are seeking mortgage assistance to avoid foreclosure, you must beware of Mortgage Loan Modification Scams!

BEWARE! Here are Social Network Scams and what you can do to protect yourself, your identity and your pocket book!!!!

Before you reach for your wallet carefully consider product claims to diagnose, diminish, prevent, treat or cure the 2009 H1N1 Flu or Swine Flu.

Disability Service Enables Scammers. Now isn’t this the lowest of the low?

According to 2007 FTC information, 36% of complaints filed with the FTC by Marylanders were related to Identity Theft.

Here’s Part II of our effort to bring simple clarification to one of the financial industry’s most complex business scheme (no, not banks, credit card companies or sub-prime lenders) – Ponzi vs. Pryamid and the legitimate cousin, Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM). Again, not sexy or funny, but something you really should know! Here’s a refresher from last week: Ponzi = it’s all about that charismatic guy who gets you to invest with him, and he uses that investment to pay off others – rob Peter/pay Paul!

This “mini-series” of ScamAlerts started when one ABC2 viewer sent in an email because, after asking many friends, she and her social network realized they really didn’t understand a Ponzi scheme. The concept gets further complicated and confused because people often interchange the terms pyramid scheme and multi-level marketing (which of the three is the only one that’s legal) with Ponzi scheme.

An acquaintance shared the following story: Her elderly mother lives alone in a city neighborhood. Her neighbors are of similar age. Answering a knock at her door, our senior mom is presented with startling (and possibly exaggerated) statistics related to home burglaries, assurance that others in her neighborhood had taken advantage of this offer/opportunity and within an hour, a home alarm system was sold by that age old “door-to-door sales” strategy.

Sadly, I can’t count myself lucky enough to have world travel under my belt (world travel would result in a much larger belt size!). A lucky local Marylander sent BBB an email in late July notifying us of her recent visit to Montego Bay, Jamaica in July. But as luck would have it, when our lucky traveler returned home, she discovered BBG Communications had billed her $41.91 for an international collect phone call and lead to a lot of unfortunate financial “mess”!

Join the ABC2 family as we count down to the 20th Annual Festival of Trees. Watch Video