On September 1, two years ago, Nicole was struggling with a buggy and three children in the heat of the day when her phone rang. It was her older sister, Lisa.
‘I didn’t answer because I was working,’ she says. Nicole is a childminder. Her phone rang again. And again. Finally, Nicole called back. ‘What do you want?!’ she said. ‘I’m hot and tired. Why is everyone ringing me?’
She couldn’t believe what she heard. Anglia Research, an heir-finder company which specialises in tracking down relatives of people who die without making a will had been in touch with extraordinary news: Lisa and Nicole were to inherit a fortune from a long-lost aunt.
Aunt Christine had turned up in their early childhood like a blessing. Their mother, who was Christine’s younger sister, had died of breast cancer aged 32, leaving their father a young widower in sole charge of two young daughters, then aged one and five.
Lisa remembers Aunt Christine moving into the family home. They never knew why she disappeared from their lives a year later and they never heard from her again. ‘It was heartbreaking,’ says Lisa. ‘She was like a mother to us, a lovely, caring person.’
As the years passed, the sisters tried to heal the rift. Nicole even wrote to her aunt 15 years ago. But she got no reply and so the mystery endured.
Of course, back in 2023, the sisters were sad to learn their aunt, who had been living in Wimbledon, south-west London, had died as a recluse with no family.
‘Wimbledon is not far from us,’ says Lisa, ‘We often go to the shops or to a restaurant or for a walk on the common. To think we were just a stone’s throw away from her, but we didn’t realise. We could have helped.’
Nicole and Lisa’s Aunt Christine’s house in Wimbledon, which had a value of around £800,000 when Christine died
The will used by Hungarian Tamas Szvercsok to ensure he inherited Christine’s house
Christine pictured on an unknown date. She had lost contact with her nieces by the time she passed away
Aunt Christine’s estate, it turned out, was large, consisting of various bank accounts and savings and a house in a Victorian terrace that had been in the family for generations.
Houses in the street sell for more than £1 million. Although Aunt Christine’s wasn’t worth that much – it had been empty and neglected – it still added up to hundreds of thousands of pounds each for Lisa and Nicole. A life-changing amount of money. They kept estimating and dividing by two and mentally spending the money.
Lisa, 54, planned to adapt her home in Sutton, south London, for her husband who has disabilities. She wanted to get a newer car and take her daughter and two grandchildren on holiday. She and her husband had a conversation about where they’d go. A Mediterranean cruise, maybe.
Nicole, 51, lives in nearby Merton with her husband – a driver for a delivery company – and their two children aged 17 and 21. Her husband has two children, aged 35 and 34, from a previous marriage. She wanted freedom from ‘financial stress’.
‘I thought, great, I won’t have to worry about bills or making ends meet,’ she says.
‘It felt like we’d won the lottery,’ adds Lisa.
In a strange way, it made up for their childhood.
‘Social services wanted to take us into care, but dad was adamant he wanted to keep us, and he raised us and was the best dad ever. But as kids we never really had a lot, and dad struggled as a single parent. So this was our time to actually get something and be happy ever after.’
The process of claiming the money began. Anglia Research – which acts for relatives in return for a portion of the inheritance – filed for probate (the legal right to deal with a deceased person’s estate) on the sisters’ behalf.
And then, last September, with probate still under way, there was a problem. Out of the blue, a man appeared claiming to have in his possession a will made by Aunt Christine. He was a young Hungarian, Tamas Szvercsok, and the will apparently named him as the rightful heir to Christine’s entire estate, as well as making him sole executor.
In short, Lisa and Nicole’s claim couldn’t proceed. The sisters felt dismay and fear as their rightful inheritance was being snatched away. ‘We thought: “Who the hell is Tamas?”‘ says Lisa. ‘It just didn’t sound right.’
Highly troubling details have since emerged. In fact, it’s hard to see the will as anything other than fake. And yet, although it’s a crime to forge a will, the police and probate service say they will not investigate.
‘We have to prove through the courts that the will is fake and that could take years and costs thousands of pounds,’ says Lisa. ‘It’s just a living nightmare.’
Lisa and Nicole are not alone. Relatives across the country are seemingly being scammed out of their inheritance by a Hungarian criminal gang using fake wills to steal the homes of the dead. It’s a crime that our system is wide open to allowing.
‘I couldn’t believe it’s so simple to do,’ says Sue Mitchell, an investigative journalist at the BBC, who was asked to look into the fraud by Anglia Research.
At the heart of the scam is the easy access online to a document called Bona Vacantia – meaning vacant goods – the official government register of unclaimed estates in England and Wales. Some of these will pass by law to the Crown, but all can be claimed if a legitimate will is produced. All the scammers need to do is fake one – and be awarded a grant of probate.
‘No one is stopping these thieves,’ says Sue, ‘They’re really well organised They’re making millions, funnelling funds out of the country. We’ve uncovered a dozen or so cases and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.’
I meet Lisa and Nicole on Zoom. They are sitting in their respective homes but are clearly very close. Lisa is motherly and protective, especially of Nicole – a habit she learned as a child; Nicole is chatty and calls Lisa ‘Sis’. They text and talk to each other every day, a few times a day. ‘It drives my husband mad,’ says Lisa.
Nicole and Lisa’s grandparents likely bought Russell Road, Wimbledon, in the 1940s or 1950s. William Stevens was a builder, and his wife, Elsie, a housewife. They had two daughters, Christine, born in 1938, and Valerie (Nicole and Lisa’s mum) in 1943.
Both sisters went on to work at Bradbury Wilkinson, a fine old press in Merton that in its prime printed chequebooks, stamps, bonds and share certificates.
Elsie died in 1963 aged just 55. Christine, then in her mid-20s, moved back to the family home to keep her father company. Barely 13 years later, she was the sole surviving member of her family. Both her sister and father died in 1976. At 38, Christine was on her own.
Perhaps this is why, only a year later, she married a man 13 years her junior. Dennis Harverson, 25, was a gardener who marked out grounds and football pitches.
The couple lived at Russell Road for the rest of their lives. They never had children but were devoted to each other. Towards the end of her life Christine was bedbound with lung cancer and Dennis became her sole carer. When he died in 2020, she was looked after by carers and then went into a care home. She died on November 11, 2021, aged 83.
She had a ‘pauper’s funeral’, a low-cost cremation, arranged by Merton Council because there was no one else to give her a more dignified send-off. Her ashes were still on a shelf in the chapel at the cemetery when Nicole and Lisa found them two years later.
How surprising, then, to find Christine had a ‘dear friend’, after all.
‘I appoint my dear friend Tamas Szvercsok to be my executor and bequeath’ him ‘the entirety of my estate’, reads the last will and testament of Christine Mary Harverson, signed and dated September 26, 2016. This, remember, was when her husband Dennis was still alive.
Anglia Research wanted to know more. When Matt Boardman, a former police officer who works for the company, obtained a copy of the will from the probate service, he did a background check on Tamas Szvercsok.
‘I was immediately suspicious,’ he says. ‘Why would Christine, a recluse who’d lived in the same property for goodness knows how long, have named a Hungarian national born in 1996 as her beneficiary?’
He called Szvercsok – and caught him off-guard. ‘He didn’t know what I was talking about. He said: “Who is Christine?” When he realised what it was about, he shut down and said he’d have to talk to his solicitor.’
Two weeks later Mr Boardman received an email from Szvercsok. ‘He wanted to warn us off, but in the process managed to make two rather glaring errors. He called Christine “Mary” – her middle name – a name she never went by. He also misspelt Christine’s home address. Russell Road with one “l”.’
There were other red flags. Christine was housebound and received practically no visitors when the will was supposedly signed and witnessed by two people in 2016. The terms of the will also meant Christine would have disinherited her beloved husband Dennis.
What’s more, not only was Christine’s address misspelt on the will – ‘Russel Road’ – one ‘l’ again, but Szvercsok’s address, a block of flats in Tooting, south London, didn’t exist in 2016. It was built in 2021.
The ‘clincher’, says Mr Boardman, was the valuation of Russell Road. Szvercsok estimated it as £310,000. Its true value was nearer £800,000. This meant Szvercsok wasn’t liable for inheritance tax – the threshold is £325,000 – and his claim could be processed more quickly. ‘It’s part of how the gang moves so fast,’ says Sue Mitchell.
Anglia Research has uncovered upwards of ten fake wills. In every case the value of the estate is below the tax threshold, even if the property is worth considerably more.
Nicole and Lisa did the right thing. They told the probate service the estate was worth more than £325,000. They filled out paperwork, got valuations for the property, submitted accounts and prepared to pay inheritance tax at 40 per cent. But it’s so easy to lie, says Sue Mitchell: ‘There are no checks. Literally, anyone in this country who has a million-pound-plus estate can tick a box saying “no inheritance tax”.’
In 2017, the system for applying for probate was moved online. The entire process can now be done remotely. It’s a set-up that relies largely on trust, but fraudsters play fast and lose with this loophole. Astonishingly, ‘you don’t even have to supply any sort of ID’, says Mr Boardman. Before the service was automated, you had to go to a regional office and swear an oath in front of a qualified probate registrar, he continues. Fraudulent applications would have been more easily picked up, as well as ‘suspicious demeanour or behaviour’.
‘I can’t believe how Tamas submitted a fake will and can get away with it,’ says Lisa.
At first, the sisters thought the will was so obviously fake it would be overturned quite easily.
But, no. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve been a victim of crime,’ reads a letter to Lisa from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) after she contacted Action Fraud about the fake will in June. ‘On this occasion, based on the information currently available, it has not been possible to identify a line of enquiry for the police to investigate.’
Action Fraud collects reports of fraud and cybercrime on behalf of the police, then passes these reports to the NFIB, which is run by the City of London Police. (Lisa and Nicole also reported a break-in at the house to the Metropolitan Police, but they decided not to investigate).
Chief Superintendent Amanda Wolf, Head of Action Fraud and the NFIB, confirmed it had received Lisa and Nicole’s complaint, saying: ‘It was assessed by the NFIB but has not been passed to a local police force for investigation at this time.
‘More than 850,000 reports are made to Action Fraud every year. These reports are assessed against several criteria. Unfortunately, not every case will be sent to law enforcement for investigative opportunities.’
Sue Mitchell says: ‘Tamas is trying to steal £1 million from Lisa and Nicole. It’s a really serious crime and the police should be taking it seriously. This criminal gang is depriving heirs and robbing the Government of millions in inheritance tax.’
The probate service has refused to grant probate until the dispute is settled, so legally no one can do anything with Christine’s house.
‘It’s been frozen, thank God,’ says Lisa. But this hasn’t stopped Tamas Szvercsok. ‘I went to the house and the locks had been changed,’ says Nicole. She had to call a locksmith to get inside. ‘The house was totally ransacked, drawers pulled out, cupboards opened.’ She thinks whoever did it was looking for ‘paperwork –bank details, signatures’.
‘It’s scary,’ says Lisa. ‘We don’t know where the gang members live. Where they are.’
The probate service say the sisters should appoint a solicitor and challenge the will through the civil courts. But this could ‘cost up to £100,000 and take at least 15 months,’ says Ms Mitchell.
The Government has temporarily taken down the Bona Vacantia list of unclaimed estates in England and Wales after a BBC investigation. But a lot of the fraudulent cases were not on the list in the first place, says Mr Boardman. Criminals trawl the streets looking for empty, rundown houses in affluent areas. They make a few enquiries, find out the person has died and then write a will in their name. ‘It’s so easy to do,’ he says.
‘I’m hopeful that the probate registry will strike off the application made by Tamas Szvercsok and that Lisa and Nicole will eventually get their inheritance,’ says Mr Boardman.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson says: ‘Probate fraud is incredibly serious and we are working with law enforcement to ensure criminals feel the full force of the law. We have well-established verification processes in place for probate applications, and our staff are trained to identify potentially suspicious applications.’
Nicole says: ‘It’s been a headache of emotions. One minute we think we’re getting somewhere. The next we’re put back again.’ Lisa agrees: ‘What was a life-changing gift has turned into a living nightmare.’
- Shadow World: The Grave Robbers has launched on BBC Sounds. New episodes will be released weekly on BBC Radio 4.
- Have you been a victim of the fake will fraudsters?
- Email us at femailreaders@dailymail.co.uk.
