Our firm has acted in some of Canada’s largest and most complex inheritance cases, and because of this recognition we get occasional inquiries about “Inheritance Scams”. It should be noted that legitimate inheritance locating efforts can be required for “missing heir cases”, but on legitimate estates you would not be asked for money or your banking information. “Inheritance Scams” do exactly that, with the lie that they will deliver a large sum of money to you, if you pay some of the fictional expenses in advance. The most interesting statistics that I found on this scam were on an Australian government website appropriately named “Scamwatch”. In 2018 in Australia there were 2,828 reports of “Inheritance Scams” of which 3.0% resulted in actual financial losses of $2,172,157  where the majority of losses were suffered by those who were over 65 years of age. For more information on how to protect yourself from scams:

www.scamwatch.gov.au

http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/04220.html

http://fcnb.ca/saving-investing/red-flags-of-fraud.html

Thanks for reading!
James Jacuta