Robbing the Dead with Ghosting Fraud

Ghosting fraud is a type of identity fraud where cyber criminals steal personal details of a deceased person to perpetrate a number of crimes for financial gain. With this type of fraud, cyber criminals usually seek to open new lines of credit such as applying for fraudulent credit cards and seeking loans so they can escape with the proceeds before the crime is detected.

Freely available information fuels ghosting fraud

It is estimated that nearly 2.5 million identities of deceased people in America are stolen every year. Interestingly in a large number of instances of ghosting fraud, the perpetrators are known to the deceased who are either in the know of the details or have easy access to this information. However, that is not to suggest that all ghosting fraud is an insider job.

Cyber criminals, too, are looking out for opportunities to take advantage of the freely available information to effect ghosting fraud. Frequent incidents of data breaches have provided cyber criminals with volumes of verified personal information of millions of people. This data is also cheaply available for sale and purchase on the dark web.

Unwittingly even the friends and family members of the deceased also contribute to the dissemination of the information. Often obituaries are a source of a wealth of personal information—full name, residence address, date of birth, etc. - for cyber criminals. They can easily look up the social media platforms to find complementary information and use them for fraudulent activities.

Enough time to engage in criminal activities

Although the ghosting fraud usually occurs shortly after a person's death, it may extend over a period of time before the information of the death reaches the concerned authorities. It may be mentioned that registering the death of a person may take months to reflect in government records. Further, grieving family members do not get the credit cards or bank accounts of the deceased blocked soon after the death. This gives cyber criminals enough time to max out the credit cards, collect benefits of government schemes or tax refunds, operate social media accounts to dupe people into transferring funds, or seek loans to escape with the loan amount.

Exercise precaution

To ensure the deceased can rest in peace, there are a few precautions that friends and family members can exercise. These include:

• Abstain from sharing too much information—such as birth date, complete address, and so forth—in the obituaries. 
• Notify all the concerned government agencies at the earliest.
• Try to get the death registered and obtain the death certificate as soon as possible.
• Block the credit and debit cards of the deceased, immediately.
• Check the credit reports of the deceased after a few months for any suspicious activity and report them to the concerned authorities immediately.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached on LinkedIn.