South east law firm Parfitt Cresswell has thrown its weight behind several genealogy firms who have questioned the wisdom of the Government Legal Department’s decision to republish the Bona Vacantia, the unclaimed estates list taken down in July last year amid a BBC investigation into its use for fraud.
Having been offline since the summer, the list was republished last week with a press release on GOV.UK saying a review had found “no evidence the Bona Vacantia unclaimed estates list has been the source of fraud.”
The data available on the list has, however, been restricted and will now only display the deceased’s name, date of death, area in which they died and Bona Vacantia Division (BVD) case reference number; a move described by the BVD as “prudent” and to “protect the list’s integrity”.
The list was taken offline following allegations it was being used by criminals to target the estate assets of those who dies without heirs, by submitting a fraudulent will supposedly written by the deceased and claiming inheritance. Any assets, including property, were then sold – in some cases for much less than market value to avoid inheritance tax.
Parfitt Cresswell was amongst a number of organisations to alert the authorities, having been impacted by the fraud. The firm acted as attorney under a lasting power of attorney for a recently deceased intestate client and discovered a fraudulent will had been submitted to the Probate Registry. A grant of probate was issued without proper scrutiny, allowing the fraudster to access and extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from the deceased’s accounts.
Writing at the time, Parfitt Cresswell litigation lawyer Simon Steele-Williams said:
“Our firm was aware that our client had no will and had never intended to make one. When they died, we paid the inheritance tax due and then applied for Letters of Administration only to discover that a Grant of Probate had been issued against a will that claimed the estate was under the inheritance tax threshold. An internal investigation revealed glaring inconsistencies in the will.”
The firm wrote to the Lord Chancellor at the time, calling for a government investigation into fraudulent probate applications and reform requiring stricter checks on wills and witness information.
Now, Parfitt Cresswell has echoed the concerns of others warning that restoring the list without strengthened safeguards risks re-exposing the system to abuse. The firms “does not accept” the claims in the Government Legal Department’s press release stating there was no evidence of fraud. Their investigations, alongside their wider experience of probate fraud, indicate that the list has been used on multiple occasions by organised criminal gangs to facilitate probate fraud.
Writing in the wake of the list being republished, Steele-Williams said:
“The Bona Vacantia list should not have been reinstated without meaningful safeguards being introduced first. We have seen clear evidence that publicly available estate information has been exploited on multiple occasions to commit serious fraud. Transparency is important, but transparency without protection simply exposes estates to criminal activity. We warned that restoring the list without reform would recreate the conditions in which fraud can flourish.”
He further warned that restoring the Bona Vacantia list without implementing protections risks repeating the very failures that previously allowed criminal gangs to steal millions with relative ease. Unless these measures are adopted, he said, confidence in the probate and estate administration system will remain undermined, and further instances of fraud can be expected.
