Facebook is awash with scams that direct visitors to fake live streams of funeral services, preying on relatives and friends of the deceased when they might be at their most vulnerable, 404 Media has found. The scams involve pulling details of real deceased people from legitimate funeral services pages and then making copycat announcements, before pushing victims to a site that asks for their credit card information allegedly in order to watch the funeral of their loved one.
The scams cause “panic on the day where you shouldn't be thinking of that,” the cousin of one recently deceased person, whose name and photo were recently used in a scam, told 404 Media. 404 Media is not publishing his name or that of the deceased relative for privacy reasons. The relative described the scam as “disgusting.”