Some days after my mother died I picked up her forwarded mail - and in it were letters from several loan agencies, and the Nationwide, all of whom had mentioned her attempts to take out loans/open accounts and enclosing forms to fill in furthe details. She'd been in hospital for two or three weeks before her death. It was quite scary - and I can only presume they got her details from the Obituary notices in the paper or perhaps from some 'rogue' at the hospital. They did get her date of birth wrong, though. Quite how it was intended to defraud I'm not sure, or by whom the scam was operated, but I contacted the Fraud department at the agencies concerned, and they dealt with it quickly and without any further problems. The lady I spoke to at the Nationwide Fraud department said that it is quite a common occurrence, and that 'they have measures in place to prevent any fraudulent transactions in another person's name'. It reassured me that at least some checks are made before these things can go through and someone actually make money out of another person's name.
Oh, and I just remembered that my son had two attempts to take money from his bank account - a debited amount from some internet company. It wasn't a lot, but the amount was in dollars. It was also enough to stop him taking money from the ATM as he has a bank account where he can only get money out when he is in credit. He checked recent transactions, and then rang the bank, quoted the details, and after a few checks the money was credited back into his account on both occasions.
Friends have mentioned similar things happening to them, or to their children - usually internet-related transactions. However, on our local news someone was mentioned who almost lost their home, because someone applied to the Land Agency for their deeds whilst they were away, then used the deeds to sell the house. I'm still not quite sure how that one turned out.
It seems that quite a few of us have had some experience of these sorts of scams!
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