The Expert Podcast

While the number of probate fraud cases this week is off the charts, it seems like sibling fraud or sibling embezzlement is spreading like wildfire. It may be the economy; maybe people are running out of money; maybe people are just having less-than-good relationships with the rest of their family. But the number of conversations we've had in the last even 20 or 30 days with people who have had a death in the family—their parent or both parents have died—and there's money to be distributed—maybe it's real estate property, bank accounts, vehicles—and one of the parties, one of the subjects, is finding out that one of the other ones is improperly keeping, transferring, or diverting some of the money. We even had one where a minor child, a child who was 16 or 17, had a family member, a parent who died 8 years ago when they were 16 or 17, and they were supposed to get money, and they were told by the older sibling, who was an adult in their 20s, that, "No, there's no money. Mom and dad didn't have any money. It all got spent." And they found out later that there were hundreds of thousands of dollars that were supposed to go to them. There were close to a million dollars in total. They were supposed to get a few hundred, 380, and they didn't get it. And now they're having to backtrace all these assets, finding out there were documents forged. This happens a lot. People are forging documents; they're forging wills; they're forging deeds on real estate; they're getting fake probate filings. Most of the time, fraudsters, especially amateur ones who don't do this all the time, most people who are doing this, whether it's the first time they've done it or the second time, maybe they don't know how to cover their tracks and they're doing things that are just blatantly out in the open. You may be running into this if you're watching this video. It's because you suspect somebody in your family is diverting money from you, and if they are, they probably did something to make it very obvious that they diverted money. It doesn't matter how clever they are or how smart you think they are; they did not cover their tracks. Even very high-level fraudsters and scammers like narcotics traffickers or Ponzi schemers can't cover all their tracks, even with millions of dollars to spend on covertly concealing assets or concealing records. If you dig deep enough, you'll find them. So, the average everyday civilian person, an amateur scammer, is not going to know what to do. They think if they quit claiming a house, forge a signature, close a bank account, hide a life insurance policy or retirement account, or divert stocks, they're going to get away with it because they don't think anybody's going to look, and that's the problem that comes in. Most times, people don't look. But it doesn't take you to look very hard. I'm sure you've already found some things that are suspicious. You, as an amateur investigator, have already found things that are suspicious or red flags. So, if you suspect that's the case, it probably is. You know, looking back over the last few years, we've worked on hundreds of probate cases. I can't remember one where our client suspected that there wasn't something there. Where there's smoke, there's fire almost all the time. There probably was one or two times that the person thought there was something, but they were overreacting, but I can't remember any, so there's not that many. So, trust your instincts; trust your gut. You have probably already found some documents. What you need to do is make sure you get a full asset search and a full forensic document forensics on any deeds or any wills. Look at things like notaries. We talked to a person the other day who was the notary who supposedly notarized this will. We've proven that they were on vacation out of the country on the date they supposedly signed this notary's will. It's been proven, no question. So, if somebody's going to do something, they're going to leave some red flags. Trust your gut. You can check out our website to get more information on probate fraud or how to maybe discuss with a licensed investigator what you have for options to uncover this and to make sure that the will of the deceased person is honored. And I don't mean will like a document; you know, a will is something that's a piece of paper; somebody's last will in testament, but the word will comes from what they wish to have happen, right, their will. And if you let somebody else violate that or if you let somebody else dishonor their will, then not only are you there's three things wrong with it, you're letting them get away with something that's improper, probably a crime, you're also losing out on what's coming to you, but most importantly, you're disrespecting the wishes of the person who's deceased who wanted things to go a different way than everybody's allowing to have happen.