Popular Scams to Avoid After A Death

When you lose someone dear, it threatens your mental health and puts you in a vulnerable state. As you make arrangements for the funeral service, plan logistics, and distribute funeral programs, you’re a prime target for fraudsters to exploit.

While there are good people out there willing to support and advise you through this painful period, there are those looking for opportunities to take advantage of you and drain your wallets.

We address some of these concerns right here:

Fake Life Insurance Policies

Family members will receive calls or emails signifying that the deceased had subscribed to a life insurance policy in the days following a death. This policy had required the decedent to pay out a large sum of money upon their death – and the deceased was late on payments.

Now, this is the tricky part. The caller might say to receive the payout, you should complete the late payments. The amount asked typically ranges from $2,000 – $5,000 to be sent via wire transfer or through a debit card.

Never make the mistake of sharing personal information over the phone with a stranger. Do not attempt to transfer funds to a company you haven’t verified. Please take a moment to review the decedent’s paperwork and identify the insurance firms they’re liaised with and the benefits they’re entitled to.

Medicare Scam

In some cases, scammers might place a call or send an email to inform you to update the decedent’s insurance cards. To do so, they might ask for the Social Security Number and date of birth. They’d make it sound so genuine that you might be tempted to release that information, but you shouldn’t.

The government does not update information this way. Thus, you don’t need to share such information with an unverified person.

Calls from the IRS

Scammers can also make phone calls to you claiming they’re members of the IRS and that the deceased owes huge tax money. The caller may sound business-like and even threaten legal steps if the owed taxes aren’t paid.

If the scammer is good, they may spoof your cell phone so that you’d see that the Caller ID is from the IRS. The best thing to do is call the official IRS numbers and confirm the legitimacy of the call.

Fake Collection Agents

Some scammers pose as credit card collection agents. They might inform you that the bereaved was late on outstanding debts for a loan that was approved. They might send fake invoices to prove their point.

As stated earlier, you need to verify the paperwork of any lending institution before transferring funds to them. Contact your family attorney or accountant for verification.

These days, scammers come up with innovative ways to siphon unsuspecting persons of their hard-earned cash. It is essential to stay on top of the situation and prevent these scams from happening to you.

We hope these pointers can help protect you and your family as the passing of a loved one is an overwhelming process. But with DisciplePress, we can take some of that stress off of you by taking all your printing needs off your plate for the upcoming funeral service. We are a leading printing company tasked with designing and producing high-quality and best-suited funeral programs, funeral announcements, funeral cards, slide shows, keepsakes, thank you cards, and many more.

All you have to do is send us a message and submit all the requested details, and we’ll take it from there. You can count on our prompt turnaround time for your projects.