The newly bereaved are targeted deliberately, because grief takes out exactly the part of the mind that fraud has to get past.

The pressure meter

Describe the approach along the dimensions that fraud needs and ordinary business does not. This will not tell you whether somebody is honest — nothing on a web page can, and treating it as a verdict would be its own trap. What it measures is how much of the approach depends on you deciding now, and for each dimension it shows what the same approach would look like coming from somebody legitimate.

Why grief specifically

• Grief impairs the exact functions fraud has to defeat. Working memory, attention, and the ability to hold a second option in mind while evaluating the first all measurably worsen in acute bereavement. That is not weakness; it is a known physiological state, and it is why the timing of the approach is not a coincidence.
• The information is public. Death notices, funeral announcements and obituaries carry a name, an address, a date when the house will be empty, and the names of relatives. It is the single richest free dataset available to anybody who wants to sound as though they knew the family.
• The decisions are unfamiliar and time-pressured by nature. Almost nobody has arranged a funeral before, there is a real deadline somewhere in it, and that genuine urgency provides perfect cover for manufactured urgency.
• Money is moving anyway. Insurance, pensions, an estate, a house: large transfers are expected in this period, which makes an unusual payment look less unusual than it would in any other month.
• Asking for help feels like a burden. The instinct to spare relatives is the instinct fraud relies on, because a second pair of eyes is the cheapest and most effective protection there is.
• Shame keeps it quiet afterwards. Most fraud in bereavement is never reported, which keeps the methods working and leaves the next family with no warning. Reporting is not an admission of foolishness; it is the only thing that reduces the next person's risk.

The funeral, which is where the money is

• Ask for an itemised price list, and take it away. In many countries a funeral director is required to provide a written, itemised list of prices, and comparing two lists is the single most effective thing anybody does in this period. The difference between quotes for the same funeral is routinely large.
• Packages hide the choice. A package is one price for a set of decisions somebody else made. Anything in it can usually be removed — limousines, viewing, embalming, a more expensive coffin, printed orders of service — and removing things is not disrespect.
• Embalming is rarely required and is frequently presented as though it were. Ask specifically whether it is legally necessary in your situation or being recommended, and what the alternative is.
• Direct cremation or burial exists, often at a fraction of the cost, with a separate memorial arranged later by the family. It is a legitimate choice and increasingly a common one.
• “What would they have wanted” is a sales sentence when a stranger says it. The dignity of a funeral is not proportional to its invoice, and no supplier has standing to tell a family what the deceased deserved.
• Check what is already paid for. Prepaid plans, insurance, union or employer benefits, veterans' entitlements and state funeral payments all exist and all go unclaimed. Ask before buying anything and ask again afterwards.

A death certificate does not close anything

• Every institution has its own process, and none of them are automatic. Banks, pensions, insurers, utilities, mobile providers, subscriptions, councils, tax authorities, landlords: each needs to be told separately, and each has its own bereavement route which is usually faster than the ordinary one.
• Ask for the bereavement team by name. Most large organisations have one, they are usually genuinely good, and they can pause collections and freeze accounts on a single call. The general customer line often cannot.
• Look for the “tell us once” service. Many countries now have a single government notification that reaches pensions, tax, benefits and licensing at the same time. It is free, it saves weeks, and hardly anybody knows it exists.
• Direct debits keep going after death. They stop when somebody cancels them, not when somebody dies, and money leaving a frozen account is one of the commonest avoidable losses in this period.
• Take more certified copies than you think you need, because most organisations want to see an original or a certified copy, and posting the only one you have is how six weeks disappear.
• Keep one list with dates and reference numbers. Who was told, when, what they said, what happens next. It is the only record that exists across all of these organisations, and you are the only person keeping it.

“We can handle the estate for you”

• Percentage fees are the thing to look at. A fee quoted as a percentage of the estate can be many times a fixed professional fee for the same work, and the percentage is rarely justified by complexity. Ask for the cost as a fixed sum, in writing, before agreeing to anything.
• A simple estate often needs no firm at all. Where there is a will, no dispute, and assets in one country, families frequently do the administration themselves with the official guidance, and the forms are designed to be filled in by non-specialists.
• Being named in the will as executor does not oblige you to use the firm that drafted it, and a clause purporting to appoint a firm as executor can usually be declined or renounced. Ask a solicitor of your own choosing what your options are.
• Beware the cold approach that already knows the details. Firms that write within days, quoting the deceased's name and the value of the house, got that from public records rather than from a relationship with your family.
• “Unclaimed assets” and “heir hunter” letters are a business model, not a favour. Some are legitimate and some are not, but all of them are asking for a share of something you may be able to claim for free. Never sign a percentage agreement in the first week.
• Get the second opinion from somebody with no stake. A regulated professional you found yourself, a citizens' advice service, or a relative with no interest in the estate. The requirement is not expertise; it is the absence of a commission.

At the door, on the phone, in the inbox

The identity that outlives the person

• Death notices are used for identity theft, because they publish a full name, an address and often a date of birth. Consider what goes in publicly, and separate the funeral details from the personal details where you can.
• Notify the credit reference agencies, which in most countries have a bereavement register or deceased-flag process. It is free and it blocks the commonest route to credit taken out in a dead person's name.
• Close and do not merely abandon accounts. An email account left open is the recovery route to everything else; a social media account left open is a lasting target. Both have formal memorialisation or closure processes.
• Watch the house. Post piling up, an empty property named in an announcement, and a funeral time published in advance are all information a burglar can use. Ask a neighbour, and redirect the post.
• Check the bank statements for the year before, not just the month after. Financial abuse of an ill or elderly person is most often discovered afterwards, by the family, in the statements.
• If money has already gone, report it fast and report it anyway. Banks can sometimes recover a transfer within hours, there are national fraud reporting routes, and none of it depends on your having behaved perfectly.

The slower predation: months, not days

• Romance fraud follows widowhood with a delay, arriving after the visitors stop and the house is quiet. The pattern is intense attention, a fast-deepening relationship that cannot meet in person, and eventually a crisis needing money.
• The tell is not the person; it is the shape. Never meeting, always a reason, escalating requests, and secrecy from family. Nobody who genuinely loves you asks you to keep them a secret from your children.
• Money asked for, however framed, is the line. A customs fee, a hospital bill, a business deal, a plane ticket, a cryptocurrency opportunity: at that point the relationship's purpose is established, whatever anybody feels.
• Investment offers arrive too, often around a lump sum from insurance or a house sale. Any offer with a guaranteed return, a limited window and no regulated firm behind it is the same structure in a suit.
• Isolation is the tool, so contact is the defence. Whoever is being targeted, the intervention that works is not a warning but somebody talking to them regularly without judgement.
• If you are the relative, lead with warmth, not evidence. Being told they are being duped produces defence and secrecy. “I would love to meet them, can we video call together?” produces information, and keeps you in the conversation for the moment it matters.

If you are helping somebody through it

1. Offer to be the second pair of eyes explicitly, and make it structural rather than occasional: “send me anything that asks for money, before you answer it.” A standing arrangement survives the day when nobody thinks to ask.
2. Take the practical jobs, not the emotional ones. Ringing the bereavement teams, collecting certified copies, comparing two funeral price lists: these are the tasks that are both draining and delegable.
3. Do not take over the decisions. The person who has been bereaved retains every right to choose, and removing that is its own harm. The role is to slow the pace, not to replace the judgement.
4. Put the one sentence on a note by the phone and the door. “I don't make decisions today. Put it in writing.” It works because it needs no assessment of who is asking.
5. Watch for the quiet signs of a running scam: secrecy about a new friend, unexplained withdrawals, a new person's name on paperwork, gift cards, or reluctance to discuss finances that were previously open.
6. Say the thing that matters at the end: that if something has already happened, you will help sort it out and you will not be angry. Shame is the mechanism that keeps fraud running, and removing it in advance is the most protective sentence available.

The drill: 16 decisions

Sixteen ordinary moments — a package quoted in the room, a firm writing four days later, a collection tin at the door, a warm stranger online in the spring. Most have an instinctive answer that is polite and expensive. Pick your move; every answer explains why.

The card

Print it for the hall table, next to the phone, or for whoever is helping.

🖨️ Print the card