journopig: monitoring the media

There has been an odd programme on British TV recently – Heir Hunters. It was originally a daytime programme on BBC One, and has now been repeated in an evening slot.

Journopig One is a keen viewer of history programmes – writing about history (amongst other subjects) is her day job, after all. But Heir Hunters leaves a funny taste in the mouth.

It’s about companies who try and trace the distant relatives of deceased people who have died intestate and who have no close family. If these people have died leaving an estate worth something, such companies will try to reunite relatives with the money, and pocket a percentage of the estate in the process.

These companies are referred to by the BBC as “heir hunters” or “probate detectives”. One of the companies featured in the series refers to itself as “genealogy for intestate and probate research”.

Which is a lot nicer than saying, “finding out about dead people’s fortunes in order to grab a bit of it”.

The BBC has a sentence on its Heir Hunters website, saying that people shouldn’t get in touch with any of the companies doing this kind of research if they want to find out about their famiy history, but should talk to professional genealogists. Well, duh.

It seems ironic, in light of this geneaology-for-mercenary-purposes, that there is now an email scam going round, which is trying to get money from unsuspecting fools people.

One case was featured in the Guardian’s Money section this weekend, as part of the regular Capital Letters feature (7th November 2009, page 12 Money section). A reader in Wales said:

“I received an email from the BBC programme Heir Hunters which asked me to respond in order to… get my claim across to me without further delay. They want my full name, date of birth and address and, if it all checks out, my claim will be on my way. I’m not sure if it some kind of scam…”

There is no mention in the part of the letter used in the Guardian as to whether the scammers had specified the name of who had died and left money. Presumably not, as scammers are not renowned for either their a) genealogical research skills or b) imagination. So this person had received a letter wanting lots of personal details for an unspecified claim, and wasn’t 100% it wasn’t a hoax.

This links into our main concern with Heir Hunters – the fact that the companies involved encourage people’s love of money. We saw one episode where the deceased person – an elderly man – lived in the same small town as all the relatives being approached by the probate detectives. None of them had met him; in fact, in most cases, they hadn’t a clue who he was. Yet they lived streets away from him.

We didn’t see anyone turn down the probate detectives’ approaches; all seemed more like lottery winners than people who didn’t even know, or care about, their family members in the same home town as them. It was all rather sad, and slightly grubby.

So it seems appropriate that the scammers are taking advantage of the priority given to getting money over the importance of family.

The BBC has added a statement on its Heir Hunters webpage, confirming that these emails have nothing to do with the programme, the BBC, or the programme makers. It adds:

“You should not reply to them and if you believe that persons are attempting to deceive you with a view to monetary gain, then you should contact the police.”

Unfortunately, though, as the programme itself has proved, people are always willing to accept that monetary gain could be theirs – both heirs and scammers alike.