Need help uncovering a possible genealogy scam.

O

OldEngineer

Member
Location
San Diego, CA
Out of the blue I got an email from a man (let's call him 'Bro’) who claims that my (deceased) father is his biological father. He's in his 70's and says he doesn't want anything except to know who his father is.

I'm hoping someone can help me understand how a man can claim he's my stepbrother. What evidence does he need? I did the '23andMe' DNA test many years ago, but didn't agree to make it public, yet Bro has hired a genealogy 'helper' (let's call him 'Sherlock') who has made a tree with my family name and inserted Bro and his mother with a paternal connection to my father. Sherlock is not an expert, but only a hobbyist. If he has my DNA and Bro's DNA, is that enough to connect us as brothers? What would he have to gain?

Here are more details if you're interested.
Naturally I am skeptical and did some research. I'm not trained or skilled in genealogy but learned what I could from the internet & genealogy websites. I answered him that I couldn't find any evidence to support his claim and asked him for any evidence that he had. His response was vague, but he did tell me that he was paying a genealogy researcher (Sherlock) and he, Sherlock, found the connection. After several rounds of email, I never got any actual evidence. Usually, it was something like this latest response:

From Bro:
The Bottom Line is that Sherlock has developed a skill at ascertaining who belongs within a DNA group. We belong in the same group. Here is one response that he had:

(From Sherlock to me through Bro):
"The DNA match list points you to the people of interest. There are 300 million people in the U.S. but only a small number of them are your relatives by DNA. Once you have identified the people of interest, you can use public records to find their families (birth records, marriage records, obituaries, military records, etc.). From this public information, you construct family trees. You link these family trees together by, once again, using public information.

That is the tree I sent to you. No person can dispute it. There may be some people left off because records of them were not found, but these 'missing people' can be ignored if they are irrelevant to the task of finding the marriage where 2 family lines converge. That is the point that I try to find, the relevant marriage. If I find that marriage, then it means that married couple are your ancestors because you have DNA from each of the family line."

To me, this word salad seems like a regurgitation of some genealogy tutorial. There is nothing specific. There are no records of his mother being married. My dad & mom had been married for many years before the year Bro was born. Any insights or clarifications would be greatly appreciated.
 

OldEngineer said:
Out of the blue I got an email from a man (let's call him 'Bro’) who claims that my (deceased) father is his biological father. He's in his 70's and says he doesn't want anything except to know who his father is.

I'm hoping someone can help me understand how a man can claim he's my stepbrother. What evidence does he need? I did the '23andMe' DNA test many years ago, but didn't agree to make it public, yet Bro has hired a genealogy 'helper' (let's call him 'Sherlock') who has made a tree with my family name and inserted Bro and his mother with a paternal connection to my father. Sherlock is not an expert, but only a hobbyist. If he has my DNA and Bro's DNA, is that enough to connect us as brothers? What would he have to gain?

Here are more details if you're interested.
Naturally I am skeptical and did some research. I'm not trained or skilled in genealogy but learned what I could from the internet & genealogy websites. I answered him that I couldn't find any evidence to support his claim and asked him for any evidence that he had. His response was vague, but he did tell me that he was paying a genealogy researcher (Sherlock) and he, Sherlock, found the connection. After several rounds of email, I never got any actual evidence. Usually, it was something like this latest response:

From Bro:
The Bottom Line is that Sherlock has developed a skill at ascertaining who belongs within a DNA group. We belong in the same group. Here is one response that he had:

(From Sherlock to me through Bro):
"The DNA match list points you to the people of interest. There are 300 million people in the U.S. but only a small number of them are your relatives by DNA. Once you have identified the people of interest, you can use public records to find their families (birth records, marriage records, obituaries, military records, etc.). From this public information, you construct family trees. You link these family trees together by, once again, using public information.

That is the tree I sent to you. No person can dispute it. There may be some people left off because records of them were not found, but these 'missing people' can be ignored if they are irrelevant to the task of finding the marriage where 2 family lines converge. That is the point that I try to find, the relevant marriage. If I find that marriage, then it means that married couple are your ancestors because you have DNA from each of the family line."

To me, this word salad seems like a regurgitation of some genealogy tutorial. There is nothing specific. There are no records of his mother being married. My dad & mom had been married for many years before the year Bro was born. Any insights or clarifications would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Simple answer. Delete and ignore. Go about your business. Jimb
 
If you did the 23&me, then they should be sending you a list or graph of people who are closely related to you. It seems to me like this answer you are getting is really vague, and you need to ask for specifics from Bro.
Ask him which company did his dna testing, and if he didn’t do 23&me, then suggest that he do that, so you will then show a notification of him being your half brother (Or whatever relationship the dna shows him to be).
Also, the dna can not always be exact with the relationship, but gives their best guess, but will show you if a person is a close relative.

In my case, it turned out that a person who was actually my niece showed up as a cousin instead, but we could see that it was a very close relationship.
Possibly, this person is related, but not your half-brother. Maybe someone in one of your grandparents was related to this person, so it shows you are related, but not the exact relationship.

If all he wants is to find out who his real father is, and you can help him, and want to help him, that would be good of you to do that; but I definitely think that you need better proof of a dna relationship than just the Sherlock saying it exists.
 

The first thing I see is Scam. Do you want to have a Half Brother you never had in name only?
A Stepmom you never had in name only? I would suppose there are 100,000's out there searching
for family they never had? Sounds like a can of worms. Best of luck. The list of Aunts, nieces endless.
Pretty sure every Metro area has a Scam machine well in order constantly calling cell numbers..

One obvious line of dialog would by your Birth mom. She may give you strength. Her Sister?
They are sponges of knowledge. Might even know your Half Brothers lineage very well a fake?
 
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OldEngineer said:
Out of the blue I got an email from a man (let's call him 'Bro’) who claims that my (deceased) father is his biological father. He's in his 70's and says he doesn't want anything except to know who his father is.

I'm hoping someone can help me understand how a man can claim he's my stepbrother.
Click to expand...
I'm with @jimintoronto ... I'd ignore it... doesn't sound right. Besides, if he claimed to be your stepbrother, it's not true anyhow because sharing a father would make him a half brother, not a stepbrother. Oh, and also, if you didn't make your DNA results public, "Sherlock" wouldn't have them.
 
CallMeKate said:
I'm with @jimintoronto ... I'd ignore it... doesn't sound right. Besides, if he claimed to be your stepbrother, it's not true anyhow because sharing a father would make him a half brother, not a stepbrother. Oh, and also, if you didn't make your DNA results public, "Sherlock" wouldn't have them.
Click to expand...
Well said, Kate, as all ways. Details are the trip wire in most scams. JimB.
 
OldEngineer said:
Out of the blue I got an email from a man (let's call him 'Bro’) who claims that my (deceased) father is his biological father. He's in his 70's and says he doesn't want anything except to know who his father is.
Click to expand...
A 70 yr. old man gets your email & wants nothing except to know who his father is?

Out of curiosity to see how this would be a scam if it were me I'd follow up
 
Let me just put this out there for a PSA... there is a big scam now that even the government is issuing warnings about. Medicare recipients are sent a DNA test and a medicare number is requested... but it's not Medicare covered and the scammer has your number. Well, it's more complicated than that, but heads up. There is also a group of scams called "long lost relative scams." If you WANT a new brother, you may pay to have a real DNA test done. (ALSO remember that 23&Me recently had that huge data breach/hacking with tons of records being stolen.)
 
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From what you wrote, I think that the person contacting you (Bro) is simply someone who is now an older man and has maybe wondered for most of his life who his father was, either because his mother didn’t know, or didn’t tell him the truth about his father, and I think that he is not trying to scam you, or interrupt your life in any way.
He just wants answers about himself before he dies.

However, Sherlock is a different matter altogether, and I think that he might be scamming Bro for money, because the things he writes don’t make sense to me for someone who is actually trying to help find someone’s family .
It sounded like he somehow found your family name in what he knew from Bro’s lineage, and then looked for marriage certificates, which in no way are always right, especially if there are no marriage records for Bro’s mother.
She might have had him and not been married, or even who he thought was his mother might not have been, it might have been an aunt raising him as her own, even.
Who knows ?
Anyway, I think that Bro asked for Sherlock because he does not really understand much about how the dna information works, and he is asking (and probably paying) because he has a legitimate desire to know who his father is.

If you can get Bro to take the 23&me test, then it should clear it up for both of you, and he does not need any help from Sherlock.
 
It sounds "fishy" to me....aren't birth certificates a matter of public record?
Do you have enough info about him to search for his birth certificate?
If you know where he says he was born, you could contact the Bureau of Vitals Statistics in the city he was born in.
I think CallMeKate is right- She said:
"if he claimed to be your stepbrother, it's not true anyhow because sharing a father would make him a half brother, not a stepbrother."
 
Murrmurr said:
Maybe not in the country where "Half-Bro" lives, i.e., Nigeria, India, Pakistan....
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I think that since he is claiming that he was told that he has the same father as Old Engineer, he would also have had to live somewhere close to where OE grew up in order for OE’s father to have met Bro’s mother; so not one of the Nigerian scams in this case.
 
Happyflowerlady said:
I think that since he is claiming that he was told that he has the same father as Old Engineer, he would also have had to live somewhere close to where OE grew up in order for OE’s father to have met Bro’s mother; so not one of the Nigerian scams in this case.
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Did Half-Bro say where he lives, or where his mother met his possible father?
 
DNA - if properly diagnosed - can point to a close familial relationship But cannot specify what the connection is. Women always know when they become a parent. Men not so much. No harm in investigating further but with caution.
 
back about 40yrs ago a guy was attempting to sell my dad
a bill of goods about the family tree...dad told him where to
go in no uncertain terms.....then later years I got correspondence from the same guy, wanting my family info, since dad wouldn't give it, and I pretty much let it slide.l..turns out the guy was attempting to sell his version of our "tree" he
claimed we or he was from aristocracy in scotland...I just think
he's a blowhard......
 
hawkdon said:
back about 40yrs ago a guy was attempting to sell my dad
a bill of goods about the family tree...dad told him where to
go in no uncertain terms.....then later years I got correspondence from the same guy, wanting my family info, since dad wouldn't give it, and I pretty much let it slide.l..turns out the guy was attempting to sell his version of our "tree" he
claimed we or he was from aristocracy in scotland...I just think
he's a blowhard......
Click to expand...
On the other side of the coin.....My Mum had a child here in Canada in 1937 while she was not married. The child was taken back to the UK by my Mum and the child was raised by her Mother. My Mum and Dad were married here in Toronto in 1944 and I was born in 1946. I didn't know about my half sister until I was contacted by a British Private Investigator in 1988. He was working on behalf of my half sister, who wanted to establish her claim to Canadian citizenship, so she could move to Canada. At that time she was 51 years old.

My Mum had never told me about her. I was able to find her birth certificate in the Ontario Provincial records, get a certified copy of it and send it to her in the UK. It took about 6 months for her to get her Canadian passport and fly here to Toronto.

Unfortunately, she and my Mum did not get along at all, and Peggy struck out on her own, living in a small town near Ottawa for a number of years. My Mum died in 1995 at age 90. Peggy died in 2010 of a heart attack at age 73. She had never married. JimB.
 
OldEngineer said:
Out of the blue I got an email from a man (let's call him 'Bro’) who claims that my (deceased) father is his biological father. He's in his 70's and says he doesn't want anything except to know who his father is.

I'm hoping someone can help me understand how a man can claim he's my stepbrother. What evidence does he need? I did the '23andMe' DNA test many years ago, but didn't agree to make it public, yet Bro has hired a genealogy 'helper' (let's call him 'Sherlock') who has made a tree with my family name and inserted Bro and his mother with a paternal connection to my father. Sherlock is not an expert, but only a hobbyist. If he has my DNA and Bro's DNA, is that enough to connect us as brothers? What would he have to gain?

Here are more details if you're interested.
Naturally I am skeptical and did some research. I'm not trained or skilled in genealogy but learned what I could from the internet & genealogy websites. I answered him that I couldn't find any evidence to support his claim and asked him for any evidence that he had. His response was vague, but he did tell me that he was paying a genealogy researcher (Sherlock) and he, Sherlock, found the connection. After several rounds of email, I never got any actual evidence. Usually, it was something like this latest response:

From Bro:
The Bottom Line is that Sherlock has developed a skill at ascertaining who belongs within a DNA group. We belong in the same group. Here is one response that he had:

(From Sherlock to me through Bro):
"The DNA match list points you to the people of interest. There are 300 million people in the U.S. but only a small number of them are your relatives by DNA. Once you have identified the people of interest, you can use public records to find their families (birth records, marriage records, obituaries, military records, etc.). From this public information, you construct family trees. You link these family trees together by, once again, using public information.

That is the tree I sent to you. No person can dispute it. There may be some people left off because records of them were not found, but these 'missing people' can be ignored if they are irrelevant to the task of finding the marriage where 2 family lines converge. That is the point that I try to find, the relevant marriage. If I find that marriage, then it means that married couple are your ancestors because you have DNA from each of the family line."

To me, this word salad seems like a regurgitation of some genealogy tutorial. There is nothing specific. There are no records of his mother being married. My dad & mom had been married for many years before the year Bro was born. Any insights or clarifications would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Hold up...did you submit a DNA sample or make your 23&Me results available? If not, this is just a tree done by searching Ancestry and so on and they're riddled with inaccuracies. Another red flag is it's a hobbyist and not a professional.

I'm going to echo @jimintoronto and say delete and move on. Smells hinky.
 
My DGD is interested in the family tree. She found some connections and manually put them on the tree. I barely knew my father, but the person she filled in was totally wrong. This is how some of errors start.
 

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