Greg's Corner

Scammers are selling funeral plots they don’t own

By Greg Collier

A sudden death in any family is impossible to prepare for, especially when the person died too young. Tragically, that’s what a family from the Atlanta area recently found out when their 15-year-old son fell to a gunman’s bullet. If it wasn’t painful enough that they lost a son to gun violence, now their son may have to be moved from what they thought was his final resting place.

The boy’s family paid for a plot and a marker, and had receipts from the sale. When the family went to visit the boy’s grave, no marker had been placed. When they asked the cemetery why the grave marker wasn’t there, the family was told there was no record of the family purchasing the marker or the plot. The plot where the boy was interred belonged to someone else. All the paperwork the family had was fraudulent.

This family weren’t the only victims. Investigators discovered that 20 other families had been scammed as well. Police believe an employee, or employees, of the cemetery may have been behind the scam.

Unfortunately, this is not the first funeral-related scam that’s come to our attention. We’ve seen stories of scammers who go into random funerals and start collecting money they claim is for the family before taking off. Then there are the funeral home scammers that have been plaguing the country recently. They pose as funeral home employees and try to extort money from grieving families. Funeral scams are some of the lowest scams anyone can perpetrate on unsuspecting victims, but this funeral scam is the lowest of the low.

Unfortunately, since this is the first we’ve heard of this scam, we don’t have any solid advice on how to protect yourself and your family from it. Grief is one of the hardest emotions to experience, so it’s understandable how people may not be in their right mind when making sudden funeral arrangements. The best advice we can give is to reach out to a friend or family member for support. And if you’re dealing with a cemetery, you may want to make contact first with the cemetery’s director before making any payment.