Cunning funeral livestream scam continues taunting grieving loved ones across Queensland

An elaborate funeral livestream scam, one of the most deceitful and heartbreaking online scams, is targeting grieving families nationwide. See just how low scammers are willing to stoop.

Vulnerable grieving friends and family are being warned not to fall victim to an online scam that’s quickly becoming a nationwide epidemic.

Low life online scammers have been deceiving the loved ones of deceased Queenslanders by attempting to take advantage of online funeral notices, sending fake livestream links that require payment before access.

In a cunning and elaborate a scheme the scammers send Facebook friend requests from an account featuring the official funeral notice, initially shared from a legitimate account.

When payment is received the scammers ultimately fail to provide access to the content or refuse to cancel the subscription.

Reports of a malicious Facebook scam continues to target grieving loved ones.

An ACCC spokesman said while so far reports of these types of online scams mostly related to live streaming sporting events, they had received reports of it extending to live streaming funerals.

Scamwatch received 39 reports of funeral livestream scams between December 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 with a total financial loss of $12.45, the ACCC spokesman said.

The ACCC also received around 160,000 unrelated reports in the same period with a total reported loss value of around $155 million.

The growing issue was recognised in the ACCC’s national anti-scam centre quarterly report in December last year, with the watchdog working to disrupt these scams where they are reported by escalating it to the relevant social media reporting portals.

Warwick Funerals are among those having issued multiple warnings to the Southern Downs community through their Facebook group.

Warwick Funerals funeral arrangers Stephen Wilson and Kelly Lindsay.

Branch manager Stephen Wilson said their service hadn’t been targeted, however they were aware the malicious act was surfacing.

Mr Wilson said their service will always state on the public funeral notice whether a livestream is included, reiterating there will never be a fee for a legitimate funeral livestream.

“If there’s no mention of a livestream then it won’t be streamed, if you do receive a suspicious link don’t open it and contact the funeral service to confirm,” he said.

The tactic was exposed when it was used to target the funeral of federal Labor MP Peta Murphy late last year, with assistant treasurer Stephen Jones labelling it “abhorrent”.

The Advertiser also reported earlier this year a South Australian mans funeral was targeted which saw scammers hound his friends and family, sending multiple friend requests on the day of the service.

Dozens of funeral homes have since issued public warnings to their respective communities in an attempt to prevent further heartache and expose the callous act.

Originally published as Cunning funeral livestream scam continues taunting grieving loved ones across Queensland