At the courthouse steps at Harris County’s Family Law Center, there is a monthly ritual where dreams come to end. Dreams of home ownership are dangled on the auction block, and then gone.

“Going once, going twice, going three times, sold,” shouts an auctioneer.

Before lunchtime, it will become a familiar refrain, as one property after another goes to the highest bidder. In Harris County, foreclosure listings have more than doubled over the past five years.

And behind the property numbers are names in need of miracles -- names like Jose Ramos.

“I was trying to save my house; I was already desperate,” Ramos said.

So the desperate Austin homeowner sought help from a so-called foreclosure rescue firm.

“They said that they can give me an answer in 24 hours,” Ramos said.

It was an answer as the company Web site showed, promising to “stop any foreclosure regardless of how much is owed” because of its “special relations with many mortgage banks” and knowledge of “negotiation tactics” to save your home.

Of course, there was an upfront fee of $600, which Ramos sent right away.

But when he tried to follow up on the phone, “I just couldn’t get a hold of them no more,” Ramos said.

Not until the very day before his home was to be put up for auction, and then the company came up with a real shocker.

“They told me to file bankruptcy on my own,” Ramos said.

“It’s a rip off completely,” he added.

“If you think that someone has the silver bullet just to fix things, understand there is no silver bullet,” said Deana Turner, with the Better Business Bureau.

In fact, the BBB has taken a strong stance against firms who offer foreclosure “rescue” services for a fee.

“We are not inviting those companies to be [BBB] members, no,” Turner said.

And the reason?

“We have seen so many horror stories from this,” Turner said.

One such horror story is that of Kim Rhodes, who forked over $1,100 in hopes of saving her Dallas home of 11 years.

“They are scam artists,” Rhodes said.

Like many others in today’s tough economic times, Rhodes fell behind in her mortgage payments.

“You’re looking for anyway out, you’re looking for any type of help,” she said.

Turns out, Rhodes sought help from the same firm Ramos did. The same firm, but this time, with a different solution.

“They told me the government has plenty of programs out there to take care of people out there whose homes are in foreclosure,” Rhodes said.

But in the end, there was no magic government aid, and Rhodes wound up losing the place where she raised three sons on her home.

That was after the company gave her the same advice: file bankruptcy on her own.

So who is this so-called foreclosure rescue outfit? It’s a Texas business with offices in Katy, Conroe and near Dallas, and it has a half-dozen different names: National Hometeam Solutions, National Financial Solutions, United Financial Solutions, Nationwide Foreclosure Services, Evalan Services, and Elant, LLC.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, its family business as well, run by four brothers: Eli, Everard, Emmanuel and Edwin Taylor.

The FTC is suing the companies for “ill-gotten gains” from “deceptive acts or practices.”

“It is a common sort of scheme,” said FTC staff attorney Dean Graybill, who offers some very simple advice to consumers.

“If they are giving pie-in-the-sky promises, ‘we will save your house,’ I would run away from that offer at the first opportunity,” Graybill said.

It’s something Kim Rhodes wishes she had done from the start.

“It’s sad that you prey on people when they’re defenseless,” Rhodes said.

But the FTC says it’s an experience consumers often can avoid.

“Very often the homeowner, if they simply picked up the phone and called the lender themselves, could get some kind of help,” Graybill said.

The Taylor family declined repeated requests to comment from the 11 News Defenders.