With many homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments, older home owners are becoming the target of foreclosure scams. The reason for this is that older home owners generally have more equity built up in their home since they have owned the home for a longer period of time. After a person misses 3 or 4 consecutive house payments they are issued a notice of default by the bank. If they do not bring the mortgage current during the few months following the notice of default the bank files for foreclosure proceedings and the home owner could lose their home to a foreclosure sale at the local court house. During this period, many investors and some scam artists target the home owners and try to strip them of their equity. Many times the home owners are tricked into deeding over their house & thus losing all of their home equity.