El Paso FBI Says Look Out For These Coronavirus Death Scams

Not sure if you know this, but there are really crappy people in this world and during times like these, they crawl out of the sewers and try to scam you out of your money.

The FBI in El Paso says because of the heightened sense of panic and sadness surrounding the coronavirus outbreak they've been seeing some really grubby scams pop up. Scammers are combing the obituaries to try and scam you like this:

1. Trying to convince you your dead loved one has a lapsed life insurance policy. They'll ask for money to reinstate it so you can get the death benefit. There's no policy and you're out the money to "reinstate" it.
2. Identity theft of the deceased person's social security number in order to open a bank account or scam the government by filing false tax returns.
3. Trying to extort money by saying the deceased person owes the scammer money or they have an embarrassing photo or documents that they will turn over to family members for a price.

The FBI says to make sure you don't share too much information in an obituary to help thwart scammers. Don't include birthday information, their mother's maiden name, where they went to high school, or other information that could be useful in figuring out personal information online. Yes, it sad that we have to resort to such precautions but trying to fix problems caused by scammers is really difficult so protect yourself and your family from these jerks.