Photos of people who have died

Why the dead are targeted

A deceased person cannot report the impersonation, cannot post a correction, and cannot appear in a video call to disprove it. Obituaries conveniently supply a full name, date of birth, employment history, hometown and family members — the exact fields needed both for a persuasive persona and for identity fraud.

Grief-targeted fundraising

Fake memorial funds are set up within hours of a death and marketed to the deceased's own network. Donors give quickly because hesitating feels disrespectful. The family usually discovers it while making funeral arrangements.

Protective steps for families

Memorialise or close social accounts promptly, ask the funeral home to keep personal details minimal, notify banks and credit bureaus of the death, and warn the family network that any fundraiser should be confirmed with a named relative first.

If these photos are yours

You are the second victim of this scam. The money goes to strangers, but the face, the name and the reputation are yours — and the angry messages from defrauded people land in your inbox, not the scammer's.

• Save everything: profile URLs, screenshots with visible usernames, message threads, and the dates you found them.
• Report the fake profile on the platform itself under impersonation, not spam. Impersonation reports are actioned faster and you can usually attach a photo ID.
• File a report with your national fraud body (IC3 in the US, Action Fraud in the UK, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, or your local police cyber unit).
• Submit the scammer's contact details — the email, phone, wallet or profile handle, never your own — to our database so the next person who searches that identifier finds a warning instead of a fake romance.
• If someone contacts you believing they were talking to you, be kind and clear: send them to a search page so they can verify the details for themselves.

If you were talking to one of these profiles

Slow down before you send anything. Ask for a live video call on a platform the other person did not choose. Ask for a photo holding a handwritten note with today's date and an unusual word you pick. Run the phone number, email, username or wallet address through our database. A genuine person will pass all three in minutes; a stolen-photo persona will produce excuses — bad signal, hospital shift, offshore rig, army firewall, "you don't trust me".

Never send money, gift cards, crypto or copies of your own ID to someone you have not met in person, no matter how complete the story sounds.