A southern-based law firm has played its part in identifying and highlighting the disturbing pattern of estate fraud using forged wills, working with the BBC on the recently released “The Grave Robbers” podcast series which started on 9th July.
Parfitt Cresswell acted as Attorney under a Lasting Power of Attorney for a recently deceased intestate client. Soon after they discovered a fraudulent Will had been submitted to the Probate Registry and 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.
The issue has hit national attention following an expose on the BBC with the associated podcast published weekly. Criminals are targeting unclaimed states via the publicly available list, forging wills laying claim to the estate, and setting estate values is below the Inheritance Tax threshold, and liquidating assets before any challenge is raised.
In the recent case dealt with by Parfitt Cressell in addition to access bank accounts, a further large sum in property was nearly lost, but the firm intervened in time to prevent the sale. Parfitt Cresswell has written to the Lord Chancellor and a number of MP’s to ask that these systematic failures are urgently addressed.
“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.”
said Parfitt Cresswell litigation lawyer Simon Steele-Williams.
The firm successfully secured an injunction to freeze the remaining assets, had the fraudulent Grant revoked, and secured a court order that Letters of Administration be granted to a member of the deceased family. The work was all undertaken at significant risk to the firm and the beneficiaries as they could not be certain of recovering the funds belonging to the estate. Following a number of court proceedings, Parfitt Cresswell managed to secure over 60% of the estate and recovered some funds from the fraudsters frozen bank accounts.
As has been highlighted in the reporting to date, there is little being done to investigate the fraud. Parfitt Cresswell informed the police at the time the fraud was taking place. They also notified Action Fraud but are not aware of any action being taken against the fraudsters. It is only because of their relationship with the deceased that the fraud was detected.
In the letter the firm calls for urgent action from the Lord Chancellor, including
- A government-led investigation into fraudulent probate applications;
- Legislative reforms requiring stricter checks on Wills and witness information, particularly for estates publicly listed;
- Collaboration with financial institutions to better detect suspicious activity;
- Adoption of AI and machine learning tools to flag potentially fraudulent applications.
In the interim the Bona Vacantia list has been taken down from public view with the government legal department confirming there was no timescale for when it will be re-published. Speaking to Today’s Wills and Probate a government spokesperson said,
“We are working with the relevant agencies to support ongoing investigations into alleged fraudulent activity. As such we are unable to comment further to avoid prejudicing any potential legal action.”
Steele-Williams concluded
“The ease with which fraudsters can currently exploit the probate system is alarming. Without reform, more rightful heirs and HMRC will be defrauded, criminal gangs funded and public confidence in estate administration will be severely undermined.”
One Response
This is appalling – and one of the many drawbacks of the digital world. When I qualified as a solicitor in the mists of time everything was done by paper. On line then meant what you did with damp clothes and words like “internet” and “email” would have meant nothing at all.
Fraud is now everywhere, but it would largely be prevented if we went back to hard copies of key documents. Probably too late to put the genie back in the bottle (and to those who were born before the digital age I must sound like a Luddite) but much more needs to be done to protect the public in so many ways. I covered this same topic in my fortnightly programme on Poppyland Community Radio (the Brief from the Legal Seagull) only this week. Link below if anyone is interested.