This is an ugly story of exploitation and deceit.

It involves a Dallas-area couple who tried to fend off foreclosure on their home and wound up victims of a scheme that preys on the desperate.

Financial calamities tend to attract con men, and the mortgage mess is no different. It's given rise to what U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan in Dallas called a "new cottage industry of bottom feeders" in an order she issued late last year.

Bankruptcy attorneys in Houston and nationally told me they've seen variations of the scheme rising with the foreclosure rate.

Here's what happened, according to Jernigan's order:
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