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Comment by sametmax | Hacker News Reader

Ok, i stole the bank details of grandpa. Let's craft his will by fake sending a text.

and where he had hidden money in his house.

How would someone else know this? You can't just ignore facts that don't fit your theory and still expect people to take you seriously.

There are many scenario where you can get hold on that information.

That isn't impossible to do, especially for family.

See how you assume identifying “hidden money” makes the Will legitimate? That’s the type of bias a fraudster, already willing to fake the Will of a family member, would willingly exploit.

How difficult would it really be to hide money/cash in the family members house and “identify” the amount/location of said funds in the fake Will to give it credibility?

So the brother/nephew found a way to access his bank account, went to the man's house and planted THEIR money without the man or his wife knowing, and took the phone/ gave it back with the draft, days before the man killed himself?

Think about what you just said and whether Occam's razor might apply here.

If you follow the OP, he is talking about the concept of forging Wills (in fact he is making a bad joke about doing this to his own Grandpa) not the specific facts of this case.

That said, you may be very surprised at what fraudsters do in practice. Accessing bank accounts of elderly parents with or without their knowledge, accessing their electronic devices, or even creating actual forged Wills (complete with signature and notarized) is not exactly unheard of in law. Even murders made to look like suicide specifically to claim inheritance isn't just the stuff of fantasy and movies, same goes for murders made to look like accidents to claim life insurance. In fact very often it is actually a parent who murders a child for insurance money.

Here is a link that includes 21 such cases: https://www.jrcinsurancegroup.com/murder-for-life-insurance-...

I'm not assuming that. I'm saying that you can't just decide not to evaluate that bit when constructing a hypothesis.

Don't know why you're getting downvoted.

In terms of bizarre things family members have done to inherit things, this sort of escapade probably wouldn't even breach the top 100.

Drug addiction + elderly family members is a terrible combination.

Want to prevent it? Write a real will as opposed to nothing.

And make sure it gets official as you die, either by being public or handed to a 3rd party.

Multiple notarized copies, just to ensure it hasn't been altered. If you do alter it, again make sure there are multiple copies and that it contains verbiage that it supersedes the previous document

Not a lawyer, not legal advice, you know the drill. However, the above is from my lawyer and is the policy I follow. He witnesses it AND it is notarized by a third party.

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