I am so sorry for your loss; now may I have your loved one’s identity?
Written by Andrea Davis
A few weeks back my mother passed away suddenly. She was 84 but her death still came as a shock to my family, especially my father. They had been together 64 years; married for 60.
My mother worked as a nurse for nearly 40 years so being prepared and having a plan for the unexpected was engrained into my existence since I was a little girl. So I was not surprised that my mother had copious notes and checklists of what to do in the event of her demise; she even wrote her own obituary. However, there was one thing not even my great, forwarding-thinking mother prepared for- the vultures who came out of the blue trying to make a quick fraudulent buck off her death.
My mother hadn’t passed more than 24 hours before the phone calls started to my parent’s unlisted home number. My dad received a call from a very concerned “Max”. After telling my dad how sorry he was for his loss, “Max” stated he was calling on behalf of the funeral home and needed to validate some of my mom’s personal information. Once “Max” asked for my mom’s Medicaid number, my dad hung up and immediately called the funeral home. The funeral home confirmed what my dad already knew in his gut, no “Max” worked for them, and that the funeral home would never ask for my mom’s personal details. “Max” and several of his friends continued to call five more times that day and several times over the next few days.
I was overcome with rage. Not only was my dad having to deal with losing the love of his life and all the logistics that come with a death; he was having to defend himself against fraud that was so cruel and so insensitive.
I wanted to take action, but I truly had no idea what to do. In all my years in security and emergency management, I never come across or even heard of a type of fraud specifically targeting families that had lost a loved one. I felt so naïve; I believed that even fraudsters had a code of ethics when it came to the grieving process. Clearly, I was very wrong.
As I started to do some research, I learned that “ghosting” is a popular form of identity theft. These vultures comb through obituaries gathering all the personal information they can on the deceased, they will do a quick Google search to see if they can find information about the surviving family members, and then, the vultures begin the harassment; victimizing a person when they are at their most vulnerable. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the grieving family member ends up disclosing enough personal information that the vultures can steal the identity of the deceased. Additionally, it will take several months to know a crime has been committed because, obviously, the dead aren’t reviewing their credit reports and until this happened to my family it never occurred to me to check my mom’s credit report.
The AARP recently published some good tips on how to protect your family from “ghosting”. Specifically,
List the age of the deceased on the obituary but not their date of birth, a maiden name or home address,
Send “certified mail, return receipt” copies of the death certificate to the deceased’s financial institutions and the three major credit reporting bureaus,
Cancel the deceased driver’s license and report the death to Social Security.
And here is one of my own. If a vulture calls you, report it! File a report with the FTC, Call AARPs Fraud Hotline 877-908-3360, and tell Medicare and Social Security you are receiving fraudulent calls. I even filed a report with the local police department.
I know the chances of catching or even stopping the “Maxs” of the world are slim, but I hope I have made my mom proud by at least trying to.
