Obituary Scam

[CaptTom]

This one's new to me.

A relative passed away recently. As soon as the obituary was published (probably on the funeral home web site, possibly in the newspapers as well) the first site which came up when searching the decease's name was a scam site.

I won't help them by posting a link, but the web address is echo, no space, vita, dot com.

They give the appearance of being an "officially sanctioned" obituary or memorial page. They stole large parts of the obit, but left out a lot and got some information wrong.

They also injected a sentence or two of their own, encouraging visitors to "subscribe" (give personal information), to buy things from them, order flowers from them and leave comments at their site. Of course, the family will never see these comments. They never even heard of the site, and won't be going there to check.

When you type the first 8 characters of their address into a Google search, the second suggested search phrase is that name followed by "scam."

Doing a bit of searching I found there was a similar site, "Afterlife," which was shut down after losing a $20 million lawsuit for doing the exact same thing.

Seems like a profitable scam. Con people into buying things and leaving comments, then sell their contact information to who-knows-whom.

We're planning to have someone watch the family home at the address mentioned in the obit during the service. I can only imagine what kind of scumbag crooks these people share information with.

[CardsFan]

Funny you mentioned this. I looked up an Obit last week, and that site was the first to pop up for me as well.

It did have a link to the actual mortuary page, which is what I was after (I did not know the mortuary), and the "real" obit was much more complete.

Did not dawn on me it was a scam page, at the time, now that makes sense.

[jazz4cash]

Not too surprised by this. The traditional sources do a lousy job utilizing new technology IMO. That kinda opens the door for the scammers. Why would the deceased address be mentioned in an obit? Or any other family member for that matter.

[Katsmeow]

I went to that site recently. I do a lot of volunteering in using DNA to solve unknown parentage and I often use obits to find people. Anyway, I ended up at that site and I thought it was the "real" obit and copied the information. Later, I found information that contradicted it. Basically it had taken some information from the "real" obit but it was partial and gave a very misleading impression. I knew it wasn't a real obit site like, say, legacy but I figured it was copying the actual obit. Now, I know it it is totally useless and worse.

[CaptTom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsmeow ...I ended up at that site and I thought it was the "real" obit and copied the information. Later, I found information that contradicted it.

So, a bit more research explains why.

That company which lost the $20M lawsuit is owned by the same guy who runs this "new" scam site, using exactly the same tactics. The lawsuit was based on copyright infringement. So now they copy only part of the obit, and change a few things. Apparently just squeezing in beneath the "fair use" threshold.

Old site corporate listing:
https://opengovca.com/corporation/8890480

New site corporate listing:
https://opengovca.com/corporation/10638706

I agree these scumbags are better at SEO than most real funeral homes. I wonder if there's any way to alert Google to the fact that they're scammers and have their search engine ranking lowered.

[JustCurious]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptTom I wonder if there's any way to alert Google to the fact that they're scammers and have their search engine ranking lowered.

You are assuming that Google doesn't already know, or if they knew that they would do anything.