Grief fraud

Consider the case of Robert Slade.  His wife, Gloria, has died recently, and while the circumstances are not mysterious, there are still questions to be answered.  Gloria was not in great health, but none of her medical conditions were in any way life-threatening.  Up until she died.

Now, someone has contacted EARLUG, which Rob attends regularly, albeit virtually.  The EARLUG people provided this person with Rob's contact information.  Rob has now received multiple phone calls from someone who claims to have insider knowledge of Gloria's death.

This person identifies himself as being the purchasing manager for the ICU at Lions Gate Hospital.  He says that he was on extended family leave, and therefore unable to speak until now.  He has only just become aware of some of the circumstances of Gloria's death.  Such as the fact that hospital administrators on the day on which Rob was unable to visit Gloria, withdrew all nursing care from Gloria for that time period.

All of this seems very strange.

As we approach, you notice a sign up ahead.  It reads "You are entering the Fraudster Zone."

Okay, it's not me.  But the circumstances of Gloria's death (and my associated grief) are so similar that I can use them to protect the identity of the actual family that is the victim of an attempted fraud.  (I did not expect, when I went to Bible Study, to spend three hours on the edges of what probably will turn out to be the beginning stages of a fraud investigation.)

The situations are alike enough that I fully understand what the family is going through.  I also, by way of being one of the professionally paranoid, understand the social engineering techniques that the fraudster is using to try and attack the family. 

As I say, the circumstances are fairly similar. The family has had a death.  The death is not particularly mysterious, and there is, in fact, no evidence of foul play.  However, the family has not been given full information, and is unhappy with the conduct of the case. 

They have now been contacted, via a rather circuitous route, by someone who claims to know exactly what happened to their family member surrounding the circumstances of the death. 

As with Gloria, not all the circumstances of the death are known.  In Gloria's case no autopsy was performed.  I understand that cytology and oncology reports have been done, but I have seen neither.  I could, therefore, suspect that something untoward might have been happening or being covered up.  I don't.  But not all the questions have been answered, and I fully understand the family's desire to know the circumstances of their loved ones death, I share that desire to know.

When your loved one dies, you want to understand.  You want to understand all the circumstances, particularly if the death is sudden.  Sometimes you want to know who to blame.  Sometimes you simply want to understand the progress of the death and whether your loved one was in pain or discomfort during the period leading up to the actual demise.  You want to know.  And if someone comes along claiming to have knowledge, and the ability to explain to you the circumstances of the death, you are really inclined to take them up on it.

This family is not completely happy with the investigation of their loved ones death.  I am not completely happy with the information I have been provided from the hospital as to Gloria's death.  However, in neither case is there any evidence of any wrongdoing (other than the continued operation of a cell phone belonging to the victim, which is probably simply the result of a completely unrelated, and opportunistic, purloining).  This still means that you wish to know. And therefore, you are in a position of vulnerability for anyone who claims that they have knowledge that they could give you.

I am not sure what the fraudster in this case wishes to accomplish.  It may simply be some kind of financial reward for providing the information.  It may be some other more complicated plan.  It doesn't really matter: the social engineering involved is pretty similar.

The informant, in this case, claims to be in a position of some authority.  The person also claims to have a reasonable excuse for absence from the scene, in order to explain why they have not contacted the family up until now.  They also claim that the authorities are involved, at some level, in a conspiracy in regard to the death.  This of course is very common in many frauds to prevent the victim from going to the authorities for either assistance, clarification, or to report a fraud.

The fraudster engaged in some rather interesting provision of contact information.  Two phone numbers were provided.  One number was to be used for telephone calls.  The other was to be used for WhatsApp conversations.  The inclusion of WhatsApp is interesting.  Subsequent to Gloria's death, I reassigned the number on Gloria's phone and found that WhatsApp continued to receive messages from original groups set up prior to Gloria's death and using her original phone number, but also received messages to the same groups from the same people when the new number was used.  WhatsApp has some intriguing addressing going on.

In addition we did some searching on the phone numbers provided.  One number seems to have been registered in the Cayman Islands.  And, of course, we all know how much fraud there is associated with the Cayman Islands.  The other number popped up some rather interesting results, indicating a connection to Russian criminals.  In any case, the fraudster was pretty clearly identified as such by the use of these numbers.  In addition, the fraudster's story of both his own position in relation to personnel associated with the death, and the conspiracy that was supposedly associated with the death, are fairly clearly, and demonstrably, untrue.  However, they are not completely improbable and, for someone who was not a professional paranoid, no one would think to check that these situations were questionable.

I do not know how the fraudster obtained information about the family.  I do have some suspicions, given some of the mistakes that the fraudster made in identifying the family.  The fraudster initially contacted someone in a place where the family had been, but no longer resided.  When the fraudster then contacted the family directly, the fraudster did claim to be local to the area.  (This seems to be an attempt to appear trustworthy due to proximity.)  Although not too terribly local.  No really detailed information was provided.  In any case the phone numbers provided definitely did not match the supposed location of the fraudster.

I do not know how much information above the actual death the fraudster had, although I'm sure that information was not difficult to come by.  (Probably a basic newspaper obituary would provide most details.)  However, I am reasonably certain that the family did, unwittingly, provide information to the fraudster on specific details of the death, and their unhappiness with the investigation.  The fraudster of course, used this further information to refine their social engineering approach to the family.  (I hope that I wouldn't be gullible enough to betray information to a fraudster, but, being a bereaved widower and therefore having questionable judgment in any case, as well as being sleep deprived, and therefore having my judgment denigrated even further. It is likely that I might provide such information. It certainly would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.)

As I said, I was involved only peripherally.  Hopefully I provided some advice in the situation, and hopefully helped the family to come to a decision.  In the end, the decision seems to have been to turn to the police, and not engage the fraudster anymore.  I believe this to be the correct decision.  But I understand the difficulty in coming to that decision.