Scammers posing as funeral homes are targeting Maine families who have recently lost a loved one to demand payment for phony expenses or insurance.
The Maine Funeral Directors Association has fielded calls from throughout the state where scammers have targeted people pretending to be funeral directors with whom the families had recently worked, it announced Tuesday.
Scammers contact families via phone and text and ask for additional payment for recent services. Some say the funeral home needs more money to complete a service on a particular day, or the cost to complete the services was more than expected. They ask for a credit card or another form of payment.
This scam is the latest in a series of attempts to prey on unsuspecting or vulnerable Mainers. This trend has only gotten worse in recent years. The number of Mainers of all ages who lost money to internet fraud rose from 1,402 in 2021 to 1,435 in 2022, but the reported losses rose from $7.26 million in 2021 to $21.4 million in 2022, a nearly 200 percent increase, the FBI reported.
“It’s terrible — people aren’t thinking clearly when they experience the death of a loved one,” said Carol Gay, Maine Funeral Directors Association’s executive director. “They’re trying to juggle a lot of things while also grieving, so someone who wouldn’t normally give out information may when they’re going through that.”
Gay said she began hearing about similar scams from elsewhere in the country in May, but calls from Maine funeral homes reporting local families had been targeted started coming in last week.
The association believes scammers are using recently published obituaries to find families and the funeral home they work with.
If a family receives a call or text from someone claiming to be from a funeral home asking for money, Gay warns them not to give any information and to instead call the funeral home they worked with to verify the call is fake.
The Federal Trade Commission requires funeral homes to have a sales contract with every family served. This contract is called the Statement of Funeral Goods and Services Selected.
Additionally, a funeral director would never make a call asking for additional money, the association said, because the cost would have already been discussed as part of their contractual responsibilities.
About 10 Maine funeral homes reported their clients had received calls or texts from scammers, Gay said, but she only knew of one family that gave information to the scammer.
