A Donegal undertaker has appealed to the public to report a fake social media account which has been set up in the name of a West Donegal man who died in a tragic crash five years ago.
Funeral director Kieran Roarty was forced to make the appeal after the fake page claimed to be streaming the young man’s funeral in recent days.
The tasteless scammers even posted a picture of the deceased young man to accompany the fake streaming service.
The man was one of a number of young people killed in a crash in West Donegal in January 2019.
A notice placed on Mr Roarty’s own official page directed people to the fake page and warned people “Scam page. Do not accept friend requests from this page.
“Kieran Roarty Funeral Director does not have any other pages, please report the attached page.”
As of this morning the fake page had almost 100 followers online.
Locals have slammed the fake page leaving comments.
Katrina Boyle Bonner said “That’s disgraceful what is wrong with people shame on them.”
Brid Sweeney asked “How sad are scammers out there?”
Mr Roarty, who is based in Gaoth Dobhair, was forced to issue a warning before Christmas after fraudsters began copying details of live funeral streams to demand credit card details.
The hackers copied genuine Facebook pages belonging to funeral directors showing live-streams of funeral services.
They then duplicated notices of obituaries and livestreams and then ask unsuspecting viewers for credit card details to continue watching the services.
Mr Roarty said at the time: “I am pleading with people that if these details are not directly on the funeral director’s page or on other legitimate sites such as rip.ie then I would ask them not to click into the link.
“A lot of people are vulnerable at this time and they could be caught out by this.
“We have already received reports of it locally and up the country in other parts of Ireland.”
He admitted that it is almost impossible to apprehend those behind the scam, saying those organising it “could be anywhere on the globe”.
He added: “It’s just another scam out there trying to cash in on other people but to prey on people when they are vulnerable after losing a loved one is just the lowest of the low.”
