Scam Fails To Stiff Undertaker

By PAUL TURENNE, SUN MEDIA

A suspected scam artist recently went to great lengths to convince a Winnipeg funeral home to wire money to Africa to "release the corpse" of a supposed dead relative.

But Wojcik's Funeral Chapel and Crematorium didn't fall for it, and notified police.

"We received an e-mail on Monday from a gentleman claiming his uncle had passed away in Nigeria and he needed us to get the body back for proper burial," said a Wojcik's employee, who asked not to be named. "He said he was from Winnipeg."

After a few e-mails and phone calls, as well as a death notice from a phony "morgue house" in Lagos, the client provided Wojcik's with a credit card number.

He asked the funeral home to take out $3,500 cash on the credit card, keep $1,500 as a deposit for the funeral expenses and wire the rest via Western Union so the client could get his uncle's body from the morgue.

Although it wouldn't have cost Wojcik's anything, they refused, reasoning the credit card was likely stolen.

"He was giving us a lot of information, but it wasn't exactly what we needed, so it sounded kind of fishy," said the Wojcik's employee. "He was saying things like 'I'm from the same state as you,' but if you're from Winnipeg you know it's a province, not a state."

The correspondence, including the so-called official morgue letter, contained broken English, which is also suspicious considering that's Nigeria's official language.

The clincher was when it was learned another Winnipeg funeral home had been similarly contacted.

Wojcik's called Winnipeg police, as well as Phone busters, a national RCMP-led scam centre.

Gus Laforge, an analyst at Phonebusters, told Sun Media he is familiar with this scamming method.

"We do get quite a few calls similar to this. Not necessarily from funeral homes, but sometimes we see it with students who are leasing out an apartment or companies that sell things on the Internet," he said.