Multiple funeral homes in Northeast Georgia have been reporting a recent round of scams trying to extort money from family members of the recently deceased.
Kevin Wetzel, president of Memorial Park Funeral Homes and Cemetaries in Hall County, said while this is not the first scam he's seen targeting funeral customers, this recent round has flared up in the last six months. Specifically, he said Memorial Park's locations have started receving reports of scams in the past three weeks.
"Families have been getting calls saying they're an insurance company, and that we can't proceed with the funeral until they pay a certain amount of money. A family (Thursday) said that it was $1,200," Wetzel said. "It's not just one funeral home, two funeral homes, it's everywhere in North Georgia."
Ben Mason, managing partner at Little & Davenport Funeral Home in Gainesville, said he's had families reporting scammers posing as the funeral home itself. He said Little & Davenport will never call a customer to demand money over the phone.
"It's just very bad that someone would try to prey on a family that's lost a loved one and try to scam them out of money," Mason said.
Wetzel said he's been trying to get the word out to families about the scams, because he says they're easy to spot when you know what to look for.
"No funeral home in the state of Georgia would call and say 'hey, we need you to come pay right now over the phone.' That just does not happen, so you're going to know it's a scam automatically if you get a call," Wetzel said. "We have started telling families when we sit down with them to make arrangements that there is a scam going on, and we have even put it on our website, as other funeral homes in the area have."
Wetzel said he's heard other funeral home operators reporting families being scammed out of as much as $1,500 in some cases.
