The Damage Done When Siblings Steal From Siblings

Shady character can be revealed when it’s time to divide money or family treasures.

Key points

• Discovering that a sibling is stealing from an estate can be devastating, financially and psychologically.
• Confusing financial transactions in a parent’s account or changes to estate planning documents are red flags.
• When parents participate in the swindle, children are dealt a crushing psychological blow.

Recently, on my website, a man—stunned by his brother’s shady behavior—asked me this burning question:

My mother passed away recently, and my brother is acting strange. He won’t show me Mum’s bank statement. I’ve managed to get copies, and the money is gone! Have you ever run across a case like this?

Yes!

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There are similar stories from others who discovered in the last stages of a parent’s life that they had been swindled by a sibling.

Louisa, 60, says her older brother, who abused her as a child, extorted their parents out of a shocking sum of money. Her brother weaponized his children, threatening that his parents couldn’t see their grandchildren unless they handed over thousands of dollars.

“It amounted to a ‘pay to play’ scheme within the family,” she says. “He bilked our parents out of their money before they died.”

During her life, Louisa’s mother lived in fear of being isolated from her son’s seven children. When the mother died, Louisa (a co-trustee with her brother of the estate) discovered the financial details. For more than 40 years—from 1982 to 2003—Louisa’s mother had kept all canceled checks and had recorded in 13 log books her payments to her son. In total, Louisa’s mother paid $2 million to his family in her desperation to be a grandmother. This money came on top of other gifts to her son’s family—mortgage payoffs, contributions to monthly bills, shopping sprees for the entire family, new cars for him and his wife, and even a hot tub. Louisa received almost nothing.

“In the last conversation I ever had with my mother,” Louisa says, “she admitted to me, ‘I was a terrible mother.’ I didn’t know then what she meant. Now I know.”

Here are a few other cases:

• Carole, a 64-year-old nurse who has two brothers, learned after her parents’ deaths that they had changed the family trust years earlier, bequeathing a valuable and coveted beachfront home to one brother. She and her other brother had paid off her parents’ reverse mortgage years earlier, with the promise that the beachfront home would be divided evenly among the three children. Her parents had lied about the will for five years. Carole—who had avoided confrontation for most of her life—was so outraged that she sued the scheming brother and, to her surprise, won the case. “The judge determined this was a ‘fraudulent transfer,’” she says. “I am so glad I finally found my voice at 62!”
• A woman handling her ailing mother’s accounts transferred a large sum of money into her private account and spent it, without informing or consulting her siblings. The mother had wanted the money to be divided evenly among her three children. Others have described a similar larceny involving conniving siblings who steal family treasures before everyone has had a chance to decide who gets what.
• The trustee of an aunt’s $8 million trust divided the bulk of the money equitably among eight family members—but the trustee then determined that the $350,000 in the aunt’s checking account, which was not in the trust, belonged to him alone.

Signs of sibling theft

Discovering that a sibling is stealing from an estate is devastating, both financially and psychologically. Scott Rahn, an attorney at RMO Probate Litigation—a firm specializing in probate litigation involving contested trust, estate, probate, and conservatorship matters in California and Texas—says it’s important to identify the issue as early as possible to minimize losses. This type of theft is actually common, Rahn says, and family members should know the signs, including:

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• Unexplained financial activity: Confusing transactions—large withdrawals or transfers; unusual increases in spending; new accounts or credit cards, or names added to existing accounts as authorized users, beneficiaries, or joint owners—are red flags.
• Sudden changes in estate planning documents: Newly named beneficiaries, executors, or trustees on a will or trust—especially when the new document disproportionately benefits one sibling—are another red flag.
• Possession of estate assets: Sometimes a sibling is caught red-handed with property or assets that belong to the estate. This sounds the alarm that these assets were acquired through theft.
• Interference with estate management: Siblings should be concerned if a brother or sister hires a new or different estate planning professional, limits access to information, or excludes siblings from the decision-making processes.

The psychological toll

The last stage of a parent’s life constitutes one of the most perilous moments for siblings. As a parent is dying, siblings vie for power, love, and family loyalty one last time, often resurrecting old family patterns. Difficult conflicts arise over who will make healthcare decisions for an elderly parent, who will pay for long‐term care, how the estate will be divided, and who will inherit precious family possessions.

THE BASICS

• Family Dynamics
• Take our Family Estrangement Test for the Adult Child
• Find a Family Therapy Therapist

In general, siblings can successfully navigate this stage if they have a solid relationship before a parent’s death. However, those who have had a frayed relationship prior to the parent’s last days may struggle with their sibling relationship during and after the estate is settled. As the money is being divided, a brother’s or sister’s mask may come off, revealing their devious traits.

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When parents are involved in the deception, it calls into question everything a child knows about the family. Carole, who discovered that her parents had participated in the swindle, says she is haunted by their “brutally cruel” behavior.

“I wonder, what was ‘the family narrative’ about me?” she says. “I was duped! I can’t discuss it with my parents, who are no longer here. It has left the whole family fragmented forever.”

Family Dynamics Essential Reads

Should You Include Former In-Laws in Family Celebrations?

Sibling Identities: Different Paths, Same Home

Many siblings who have been swindled say that peace comes with the end of these toxic relationships. “The happiest day of my life,” Louisa says, “was when my mom passed; I knew I didn’t have to have any contact with any of them again.”

The human cost of scams: A mother, a daughter, and a complicated betrayal of trust

Written by:

Thomas Peacock

• Fraud

Scams and the scammers behind them are tricky. This is news to no anti-fraud team leader at any institution anywhere in the world.

Scams — or authorized push payment (APP) fraud — has evolved into the most costly and prevalent fraud type in the world because of its ability to make a criminal transaction appear legitimate until at least (but also, often long after) it’s too late. This ability to skirt bank defenses makes scams absolutely devastating to the human victims who unwittingly fund them and absolutely vital for financial institutions to address.

As we reported in our global scams report, BioCatch customers serving 340 million accountholders on five different continents reported an average of 65% more scams between 2024 and 2025, underscoring both the scale and urgency of the problem.

To highlight just how slippery scams in the GenAI, real-time-payment era can be, we turn our attention to a BioCatch customer in Europe. This case study illustrates how fraudsters exploit vulnerabilities, manipulate relationships, and drain victims of both money and emotional strength. It’s a story about a mother undergoing cancer treatment, her daughter, and the way behavioral intelligence ultimately exposed the scam.

But let us show you instead of just telling you.

Behavioral evidence

An elderly, longtime accountholder, with a history of rarely logging into her online banking profile and never using mobile banking, noticed suspicious activity on her account and reported it to her bank.

The bank launched an investigation.

Investigators noticed a series of logins from a device belonging to the victim’s daughter.

The victim explained she was undergoing cancer treatment and had entrusted her daughter with her digital banking credentials.

In June of 2025, the bank observed a surge in payments from the victim’s account to her daughter’s account at the same bank.

At this point, investigators had two possible theories:

1.) The daughter was stealing from her mother for her own financial gain.

2.) The daughter was actually the victim of a scam, and her scammer tricked her into dipping into funds from her mother’s account.

Investigators turned their attention to the daughter’s account.

A frequent digital (and mobile) banking user, the daughter made monthly, high-value payments toward the end of each month, suggesting rent.

The daughter’s increased account activity continued.

Investigators observed a first spike in payment activity in mid-May — the same day the daughter attempted to take out a pre-approved loan, which the bank blocked.

From May 16 to Aug. 31, the daughter made 83 payments, totaling €120,000.

When the bank compared the timing of transfers from the mother’s account to the daughter’s and from the daughter to an unknown beneficiary, it detected a pattern.

When the mother’s money arrived in the daughter’s account, the daughter transferred it away nearly immediately.

The daughter directed all payments to the same beneficiary, who first appeared on May 16. All payments originated from the same device.

When larger transactions were blocked, the daughter switched to a peer-to-peer service capped at €1,000.

Investigators saw the telltale signs of scam manipulation: a string of “test” transfers (€1, €20, then €500).

When her balance ran low, the daughter repeatedly requested higher credit limits.

This desperation — seeking every possible source of funds to keep sending money — is a common red flag in scam victims.

A closer look at behavioral data provided critical clarity.

When the mother’s account was accessed, her username (a national ID number) was consistently pasted in rather than typed, indicating the user (the victim’s daughter) was unfamiliar with those login details.