Funeral fraud: how scammers make money out of fake Facebook links

Fa'anānā Efeso Collins pictured with his wife Vasa Fia and their daughters, Asalemo and Kaperiela.

Scammers are increasingly targeting the dead, counting on the grief and sympathy felt by family and friends to extort money. Jane Phare reports.

The scam involving the death of Green MP Fa’anānā Efeso Collins may have shocked the community that loved him, but for Netsafe’s Sean Lyons, it was no surprise.

Scammers, it seems, don’t have any boundaries; anyone and anything is a potential target.

In the leadup to the funeral of Collins, who collapsed and died suddenly after the ChildFund Water Run charity event last month, the scammers saw the perfect opening. Here was a well-known and revered man surrounded by a large, grieving community; the untimely death of a 49-year-old husband and father, devoted to his two young daughters. His death was given wide coverage in the media.

Mourners gather after Green MP Fa’anānā Efeso Collins died last week while taking part in the ChildFund Water Run to raise funds to support local communities in the Pacific. Photo Jason Oxenham

And in came the scammers, setting up fake Facebook pages and hoax livestream links to his funeral, which was held on Thursday.

Lyons, Netsafe’s chief online safety officer doesn’t mince words, describing the practice of targeting the dead as “pretty abhorrent and horrible”.

Scammers, mostly based overseas, often target people who may not have been famous but were relatively well known in their communities – a school teacher, a religious leader, a band leader. Promising Hawke’s Bay rugby player Caleb Baker was an example of that. Baker, who played for the Napier Technical Sports Club, was tragically killed in a car crash last month. Before his funeral was held in the Napier Technical clubrooms in Marewa, the club was forced to issue a warning on its Facebook page after fake pages offered a link to Baker’s service.

Scammers set up a fake link to Caleb Baker's funeral service, held at the Napier Technical Sports Club.

Hoax pages are a way of extracting money from unsuspecting mourners and members of the community. People are charged for a livestream that has been provided free by the family for friends and family who are unable to attend.

More concerning was the follow-on from that, Lyon said. Once victims of the scam had given their credit card or bank account details, scammers could use those to access large amounts or, more commonly, set up smaller payments over a protracted period.

Those taken in by the scam might notice the agreed $2 charge for the livestream but not notice $9.99 disappearing from their account every fortnight, he said. Scammers closed down and moved on quickly, making them hard to catch.

Increasingly common were fake Givealittle-style crowdfunding pages linked to a grieving family to help with costs, or a fake link to a charity that the family allegedly wants to support.

Scammers play off people’s emotions — deaths, reactions to natural disasters, including the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes, and the Christchurch terrorist attack, or charity appeals.

Netsafe online safety operations manager Sean Lyons says scammers prey on people's emotions and their good nature.

Says Lyons: “It’s a fraud. It’s a theft, it’s an extortion.” And, he says, it’s a low blow.

“That’s preying on people’s good nature, their good intentions, people’s desire and want to do something to support their communities. We’re really concerned that it damages people’s faith in charity giving.”

Even more ominous are fake obituary or hoax news sites that dramatise a death, or include untrue “facts” to encourage the entry to go viral. The New York Times, writing about fake obituaries, used the death of Matthew Sachman, 19, in a New York subway as an example. Sachman, in the early hours of New Year’s Day this year, accidentally fell on to the tracks in front of a passing train when he was fooling around with a friend.

But soon a fake obituary, alleging he had been stabbed to death, was gathering traction on the internet. The New York Times did a deep dive as to why.

They tracked down one of the “obituary pirates”, an internet marketer based in New Delhi. He saw Sachman’s name trending on Google searches, used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write an article and then earned revenue by posting it on various websites.

Lyons doubts there’s much money to be made from the “clicks” on a fake obituary, not in New Zealand anyway. It is more likely that the fake pages would eventually lead to crowdfunding pages to raise money or contribute to funeral costs, he said.

Jordan Heersping, manager of incident response at Cert NZ, said New Zealanders were generous and giving, and scammers preyed on that.

In the wake of a well-known person’s death, it was common for there to be obituaries on the internet and on social media. He warned that if an obituary was not on the official page of the person, or the official page of the funeral director, it should be viewed with some caution.

“We strongly recommend that New Zealanders don’t send money or financial details to any site they are not 100 per cent sure about. Always check official sources for information.”

Lyons agrees. “Think twice before you hit the button,” he warns. “Stop for a minute, [take a] deep breath, talk to someone else. You’re often emotionally moved in these situations, that’s why you want to donate. Find someone who is less emotionally attached in that moment to give you a second opinion.”

Almost everyone, given the right conditions, the right appeal and the right timing, could be susceptible to scams. The trick was to slow down the process, he said.

If a scam or fake page was detected, people needed to report it to the social media platform or Google. If that didn’t work, Lyons said Netsafe could assist with the process. Heersping also said Cert NZ would work to have a site taken down once it was reported.

“However that may take time. In the meantime, the families can put out a message saying there are fakes around.”

Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.