FORT WORTH, Texas -- A Tarrant County couple is being evicted from their home -- even though they made their mortgage payments every month.

Lorenzo and Karen Davis said they have twice been victims of mortgage fraud. According to the FBI, such crimes have doubled in the past few years.

The couple moved into their dream house just west of Fort Worth about a year ago.

"We love this house," Lorenzo Davis said. "This is something we've been dreaming of."

The house is big enough for them, their three children and the up to five foster children they care for.

"That's what we do," Davis said. "We're a foster family. We love kids, and we love to house kids."

He said he and his wife thought they were leasing to buy their home.

"It was just the wrong paperwork for what they thought that they were going to do," Chad Lee, the family's attorney, said.

Lee said that while the couple was writing checks to the builder, he never paid the bank.

"He never passed (it) on to the bank," Davis said. "He kept every penny of it."

The builder, meanwhile, has disappeared and is "nowhere to be found at this point," Lee said.

"We have not been able to track them down," he said.

NBC 5 was also unable to locate the builder.

Through a mutual friend, Davis and his wife then met Sabrina Jones, who claimed to be a senior loan officer for a mortgage company.

"She was going to really help us out," he said.

They have canceled checks for the thousands of dollars they wrote to her. She told them it was "earnest money," Davis said.

"She would look at you eye-to-eye like she was telling the truth," he said. "All along she was just telling us the biggest fib in the world."

The couple said Jones, like the builder, ran off, too.

"She disappeared just like their money did," Lee said. "Everything was gone."

NBC 5 learned Jones has been convicted of theft in Tarrant County.

When shown her mugshot, the Davises said there was "no question" it was definitely the same woman.

"A mugshot? We never knew. We didn't have no idea," Lorenzo Davis said.

Jones told NBC 5 by phone that she cashed the couple's check but her old boss received the money.

The Davises, who are now struggling to avoid eviction, said they have lost a total of more than $20,000.

"Right now I'm worried," Karen Davis said.

"They say there's a lot going on like this. But to be victimized twice, within the same time frame? It's too much to handle," Lorenzo Davis said.