The Letter Says You're Owed $10.8 Million. You Aren't.
A law firm you've never heard of says a stranger who happens to share your last name died and left behind an unclaimed life insurance policy — worth, almost always, exactly $10.8 million. The FTC re-issued its warning about this letter on July 9. It's not the first time. It won't be the last.
Here is how the letter that landed in mailboxes across 30 states last year opens, reproduced exactly as the Better Business Bureau posted it:
"I am reaching out to discuss a sensitive and significant matter concerning an unclaimed 'permanent life insurance policy from one of our late clients, Late Mrs. Maria (Last Name), who unfortunately passed way approximately four years ago due to Covid-19 complications."
Notice "passed way." Not "passed away." A real law firm's letterhead doesn't have typos in the second sentence. That single dropped word is doing more to identify this as fraud than anything else on the page — and it's the kind of small, sloppy tell that AARP's fraud researchers say to watch for specifically.
The same $10.8 million, over and over
The dead client is always a "respected Stock Broker and Retired CPA." The account is always a "Payable on Death" savings account. The amount is always $10,800,020 — sometimes rounded to $10,800,000 in the letter itself. The split is always the same: 10 percent to a charity of the "firm's" choosing, the remaining 90 percent divided 50-50 between you and the lawyer who found you.
The Better Business Bureau's Ottawa office logged nearly 100 reports of this exact letter in a single month — September 2025 — arriving in 30 U.S. states plus one Canadian province. One recipient described it almost word for word: a letter from "Peter Abbott," an address in Ottawa, a dead woman sharing the recipient's surname, thirty days to respond.
Nobody who reported it to BBB had lost money. That's the encouraging part. The letter asks for a reply, not a wire transfer, on the first contact — the money, or the personal information, comes later, once someone writes back.
The FTC has said this before. Twice.
On July 9, the FTC's consumer education team posted a fresh alert: "Unclaimed life insurance money? It's a scam." It's short, it names no dollar figure, and it makes one point directly — the letter is not from a lawyer.
What the alert doesn't mention is that the FTC already said almost exactly this in July 2024, under a nearly identical headline, written by the same consumer education specialist. And before that, in 2022. Citing FTC's own numbers, AARP counted 2,762 reports of "foreign money and inheritance scams" that year, up from 2,447 the year before. That's the most recent year-specific count either agency has published — nobody has put a fresh number on how many of these letters are landing in 2026, and we couldn't find one either.
What's changed less than the calendar: the pitch. Sole heir. Distant, dead relative. Money that must be split with a "firm" because paperwork and a deadline demand it. If it sounds like something you've heard before, that's because it is.
Where it fits next to everything else the FTC is tracking
Inheritance letters are a tiny slice of a much bigger number. The FTC's broader fraud data, published in June, put total 2025 losses to imposter scams — people pretending to be a bank, a government agency, a company — at $3.5 billion, nearly triple what it was five years earlier. Business impersonation alone accounted for close to $1 billion; government impersonation took roughly $920 million, up from $789 million in 2024.
Inheritance and unclaimed-money letters don't get their own line in that report. They're not separately tracked in the FTC's current fraud categories, at least not in anything published so far. That's a gap, not a fact we're filling in — the scam that keeps recurring is, on the government's own numbers, too small a slice to name.
What This Means for You
If a letter like this arrives at your house: the FTC's advice hasn't changed in four years, because the letter hasn't either. Don't respond, don't send a "processing fee," and don't give out a Social Security or bank account number to confirm you're the "right" person. Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
If you're helping an older parent go through their mail: this is exactly the letter AARP's Fraud Watch Network was built to catch — a typo in the letterhead, an unbelievable dollar figure, a stranger who happens to share your name. AARP's helpline (877-908-3360) will look at a letter like this with you before you decide it's real.
Sources
- FTC Consumer Advice, "Unclaimed life insurance money? It's a scam" — July 9, 2026
- FTC Consumer Advice, "Contacted about long-lost relative's life insurance policy or an inheritance? It's a scam" — July 5, 2024
- Better Business Bureau, "Consumers across North America receive letters claiming they are owed an inheritance" — September 29, 2025
- AARP, "Inheritance Scams: How You Can Spot the Warning Signs"
- FTC, "FTC Data Show People Reported Losing $3.5 Billion to Imposter Scams in 2025" — June 2026
Disclaimer: This article is news and general information only, not financial or legal advice. Figures cited come from FTC, BBB, and AARP reporting and are current as of publication; where no current figure exists, that gap is noted rather than estimated.