Need help uncovering a possible genealogy scam.

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.
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This phrase: No person can dispute it.
Sounds very artificial to me. It sounds like a lame reason to buy something, like Bro has been pitched his services and I assume he's paying him?

First of all, they are not in a dispute, so why the automatic defensiveness in that phrase? Secondly, most of us would say something other than "No person can dispute it." We might say "no one can dispute this" or, "these results can be verfied by this, that and the other thing".

That phrase alone sounds AI-like to me. Has Bro ever talked to Sherlock on the phone? Ever met him in person?

What was that meme going around so many years ago? "All your base are belong to us!" Sounds like a bad translation. Find out if Bro is paying this guy.

​

 

About 6 years ago I was contacted by a woman saying she was my half sister from my dad. She took ancestry to find this out. It turns out her mom met my dad during WW2 in England. He was dating my mom before he left. The woman was married to an English soldier and had 2 sons.

I have no clue if my dad ever knew about her as it must have happened as he was leaving because she’s slightly a year older than my older sister. My parents got married as soon as my dad got home.
 

I don't see any tangible evidence of a "scam" at this point. A lot of people well into their later years are interested in family connections. A couple years ago I got an email from a 1st cousin that found me on Family Tree DNA. I had been searching for him since the mid '90s. We exchanged a couple of emails, catching up on our lives since the '60s.
 
I was contacted last year by a woman who was trying to determine her father's biological father. Her grandmother was dating a GI in California in the 1950's and discovered she was pregnant after he shipped out to Japan. Her father was adopted out when he was born.

All she had was a photograph, a last name and a possible first name, which matches my late husband's family. She emailed me the photograph and it looked exactly like my husband's oldest brother, who I determined after talking to a niece, confirmed that he was in California at that time and shipped out from there to Japan. He died many years ago, estranged from his family and we don't have any contact any longer with his ex-wife and his kids.

I gave her what info I had and suggested that she contact the niece for any further info. She thanked me and said she was satisfied with the info and didn't want to pursue it any further. I never heard from her again and neither did my niece.

I'm pretty convinced that her father was fathered by that brother-in-law.
 
"Oh, and also, if you didn't make your DNA results public, "Sherlock" wouldn't have them."
That's not entirely true. Your identity is withheld, but your DNA results are online. So, DNA results could prove you had a brother you never knew about, but you would remain nameless.
Old Engineer's unknown relative could be sincere. But unless there is provided real documentation, I'd delete the mails, and get a beer.
A lot of these amateur ancestry people rely on questionable internet work. Everybody is related to Cleopatra, Einstein, Charlemagne, etc.
 
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fuzzybuddy said:
jimintoronto said, "Oh, and also, if you didn't make your DNA results public, "Sherlock" wouldn't have them."
That's not entirely true. Your identity is withheld, but your DNA results are online. So, DNA results could prove you had a brother you never knew about, but you would remain nameless.
Old Engineer's unknown relative could be sincere. But unless there is provided real documentation, I'd delete the mails, and get a beer.
A lot of these amateur ancestry people rely on questionable internet work. Everybody is related to Cleopatra, Einstein, Charlemagne, etc.
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Fuzzy. I said NO SUCH THING in this thread. Please go back to the first post, and read each comment, and you will see that I didn't write anything like what you quoted me as saying. PLEASE RETRACT. JimB.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
That's not entirely true. Your identity is withheld, but your DNA results are online. So, DNA results could prove you had a brother you never knew about, but you would remain nameless.
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Nope. When we had both 23 & Me and Ancestry done, there was an option to have them totally destroy the results and not have it online. I foolishly didn't choose that at first, but after about a week I requested to have them destroyed/removed, which they did. Now I'm not clueless enough to think my results don't exist somewhere... of course they do. But according to both places, my results have been "destroyed" and they are not "online" or available to scammers. I could tell when they honored my request because suddenly all the contact from weirdos and "long lost relatives" stopped. It's been a couple of years now and not a single contact since.
 
My DGD did the test on Ancestry and that’s why someone contacted me. Even if your own results aren’t there, with a little searching they may be able to logic out who you are in the relationship.
 
this is a scam...trying to use that connection with people to gain one foot on the door...block all..remove your dna results from website. .don't go there
 
OldEngineer said:
There are 300 million people in the U.S. but only a small number of them are your relatives by DNA.
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I think 'Bro' should do a DNA test with 23andMe and share the results with you (via the official website), that way you could see what percent you have in common.

One thing that surprised me about my 23andme results were how many relatives a person has. To me it looked like half the state of PA are my 4th cousins.
 
HoneyNut said:
One thing that surprised me about my 23andme results were how many relatives a person has. To me it looked like half the state of PA are my 4th cousins.
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That would be me... hey, Cuz! 🤭 Seriously, though, the thing that spooked me enough to have them destroy my sample was that I was contacted by someone claiming to be my... get this.... grandson. I have one child, and this dude was years older than my daughter. I realized the potential for a whole lot of fraud there and no longer wanted any part of it. It was totally accurate with the towns in Germany and England my ancestors were from which was awesome, but I can guarantee I don't have a grandson just 16 or 18 years younger than I am. 🙄
 
It’s not necessarily a scam. All my half sister wanted was some information to finish her geology which she spent years working on. I supplied the information and she also wanted pictures of our dad and grandparents. It cost me 70 to mail the pictures.
 
Thanks to all for the advice and information about my ancestry question.
First, half-brother is correct, not stepbrother.

I have already asked Bro for ANY evidence he has including 23andMe DNA. He always responds with a paragraph or two of gibberish from Sherlock.

Other information fyi:
  • Bro and Sherlock have met once and continue to communicate electronically.
  • Bro has paid Sherlock. I don’t know how much. But enough that Sherlock spends significant time creating a defense of his claims.
  • I don’t know how he got my email, but I don’t think it was difficult. I had a tech company that used my name.
  • I’m still trying to discover how my DNA connects us. I did the 23andme test but set it private. Maybe it leaked during the hacking incident. I don’t recall having the choices of ‘Destroy’ or ‘Public’. I recall that the choices were ‘Private’ or ‘Public’, and anytime they could be removed forever.
  • I asked for a copy of his birth certificate or tell me who is listed as father.
  • What did your mother or aunt ever tell you about your biological father?
  • I have used facial recognition software to compare pictures of me, Bro and my first cousin (deceased) at about the same age. My cousin and I match, Bro does not.
He never provided me with any answers.

It’s hard for me to just forget it and have a beer. My dad (now gone for over 30 years) was a devoutly religious man. He and my mother were married for 54 years until her passing. When Bro was ‘conceived’ (in 1946 by an unknown man), I was 4 years old, living with my parents in a city 300 miles away. This was a long trip in 1946.

I have trouble just letting this slide because it dishonors my father. On the other hand, there are 2 outcomes if taken to the end. One is good (he really is my half-brother & I would embrace that) or there is a nefarious accusation made. Risk vs Reward analysis: I’m going to ignore this claim.
 
OldEngineer said:
He never provided me with any answers.

It’s hard for me to just forget it and have a beer. My dad (now gone for over 30 years) was a devoutly religious man. He and my mother were married for 54 years until her passing. When Bro was ‘conceived’ (in 1946 by an unknown man), I was 4 years old, living with my parents in a city 300 miles away. This was a long trip in 1946.
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My two cents is to say that especially since Bro didn't give you answers to simple requests like who's listed on his birth certificate, and the fact that Sherlock sounds as shady as the dickens, I'd keep Dad's good memory intact and drop this. If he believes what Sherlock is feeding him, maybe a *real* doctor-performed DNA test would be in order, expensive or not. Do keep in mind, though, that it doesn't necessarily mean that "Bro" is in on it... Sherlock may be scamming him, too. @OldEngineer
 

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