Using artificial intelligence to canvas obituaries, fraudsters identified the woman as a target, told her they’d helped her late husband cook up a tax avoidance cover-up and said she had to pay them $7,000 in order to “preserve what was left of her inheritance,” USA Today reports. By the time the mother’s family figured out the scam, it was too late.
The fraudsters were “scouring obituaries and looking for vulnerabilities,” LiaBraaten said. “It’s so disgusting, I can barely keep my cool about it.”
LiaBraaten noted that AI is proving to be highly useful for scammers, as the technology makes it much easier and faster to identify victims, write a “scam script” and generate deepfake images, voice messages and videos. This allows scammers to set up convincing fraud campaigns and send phishing calls, texts or emails out to thousands of potential victims within minutes.
“They don’t necessarily commit the fraud on the first call,” LiaBraaten added. “They may just be gathering personally identifiable information to leverage against you in the future.”
How easy access to obits is a boon for scammers
With the “graveyard grift,” fraudsters can easily extract information from a public obituary — including names, relatives, employers, hometowns and other details — to create a convincing scam. This adds to a growing list of fraud options against older Americans, most of which are now easier to create using AI.
According to the FBI, Americans aged 60-plus reported $7.7 billion in internet or cyber-enabled crime losses in 2025, up 59% from 2024. The 2025 figures represent an average of $38,500 lost per elderly scam case.
Making matters worse, cases involving deceased spouses put a grim new spin on the elderly fraud front.
“Recently widowed older adults can be especially vulnerable because they’re grieving and often dealing with an overwhelming number of financial and administrative tasks at the same time,” Jennifer Szakaly, founder and CEO of Caregiving Corner in Charlotte, NC, who often educates families about senior scams, told Moneywise.
One big problem tied to scams against older Americans is that families are particularly vulnerable right after a parent or grandparent’s death, especially when they’re closing accounts, paying bills, dealing with insurance, settling an estate or trying to understand financial responsibilities their spouse previously handled. “A call about an unfamiliar account or unpaid obligation might not seem unusual given the circumstances,” Szakaly noted.
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