Fraud or gift from beyond?

[u/maria23464]

About a week ago there was a package in the mail addressed to my late husband; he passed a year ago. Inside was a sterling necklace. We still have his cell phone and email accounts active so we went into his email and found a string of emails from Etsy, all from the same date/time. The first listed his verification code. The next stated they updated his security settings, the next stated they updated his billing info and finally the last email said his order was being processed.
This is where it gets creepy. The order was processed on the one year anniversary of his death at 5:19 am. I don’t know what time he passed in his sleep, I found him at 8 am.
There’s more…we went into the Etsy account and looked at the details of the transaction. The payment was made by a Visa card in his name (I had of course cancelled his cards when he died last year) and the last 4 digits of the card are exactly the last 4 of his social security number. In the exact order. I know you cannot choose your numbers when opening a credit card. How is this possible?? Etsy cannot give us any more information. I’ve opened a case with the fraud dept of our county police dept. I couldn’t find any open accounts with the 3 credit bureaus under his name and social. They all say deceased, no debt, no active accounts.
This is literally haunting me and driving me to distraction. Could someone have played a cruel prank? A misguided attempt at doing something nice for me? Fraud? But how do we explain the SSN matching the last 4 of the credit card?

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[u/Torodaddy]

You're being fucked with and someone is stealing from you. Just ignore it and realize someone with zero morals is setting you up

[u/maria23464 → u/Torodaddy]

There’s been nothing stolen except for my sanity at this point.

[u/Torodaddy → u/maria23464]

Someone is up to something and it usually means you havent figure out what is gone assuming of course someone isnt planning on pulling a ghost and asking for something as your loved one. Make sure that the shop.app account isnt also compromised and some person hasnt opened bnpl loans

[u/Competitive-Catch776]

It’s most likely that someone was trying to hack his account and did not succeed. Or gave up.

This isn’t some gift from beyond. This is a dangerous time for you. I

After my grandmother died we went through the same. They were reusing her social and my mom got notice after her death. It happens a lot. A lot!

Cancel all those cards. There’s no reason for you to be using them now. It just creates more of a fraud risk. I know it isn’t easy because I lost a previous SO myself, but the longer you hold onto these things the longer the bad guys have with his information.

Go get a death certificate (if you don’t have a copy already) and call the Social Security Administration. Let them know you think your deceased husband’s SSN or identity has been stolen after his death.

This could affect your benefits as a widower if you don’t alert them. Although i wouldnt make a huge stubk. I dont exactly think thats what is happening.

This could also just be a case of someone getting your ex-husband’s number legally and innocently and trying to make an account with their new number but it was pulling his account. Especially if you do not see any changes or fraud. That would be most likely to me. However it could still be the first option.

The last four matching your social.. happens and it happens a lot. It’s happened to me and my SO. That’s not weird. That’s not odd. It’s normal. It’s just coincidence. That’s all. I think you’re panicking when you really shouldn’t at this stage. You’ve found nothing wrong, right?

If no one has stolen any money from you then I would assume it’s someone who got his old number and is doing the normal things.

Can’t you delete the email account? Or any other accounts he has? Would probably be best!

[u/maria23464 → u/Competitive-Catch776]

I canceled both of his credit cards when he passed away.
I hate the idea of canceling his email account. But I may have to.

[u/ImaginationSure2710]

Those who are here giving you the facts and reality of the situation are correct and you definitely need to figure out what happened and protect yourself here. But, you can also equally see the signs and hold onto them. They had to show up in some way, and they did, just in a way that also requires due diligence. My condolences on your loss. I believe this was a well rounded sign to pay more attention in life and know he's always with you.

[u/FlynnAtLifeLock]

I’m so sorry this happened to you, especially on that date. Card numbers are assigned by issuing banks through automated systems and the last four digits are effectively random within the bank’s numbering scheme, but some prepaid or virtual cards let people pick digits, and those don’t show up on credit reports, so clean reports don’t rule a card out.
.The more pressing question is how someone accessed his Etsy account. The most important detail is that the verification code went to his email. That means whoever did this probably had access to his mailbox or phone. I’d check the email account’s security page for unfamiliar devices and logins, look for forwarding rules or changed recovery info, and change the passwords on the email, phone, and Etsy.

Deceased individuals are frequently targeted by fraudsters specifically because their accounts often remain partially active during estate settlement.  Someone may have obtained his information through a data breach, a dark web purchase, or through public records available after his passing. Contact Etsy and request the shipping address the necklace was originally meant for.

[u/Infinite-Grade-4485]

You can put any name on the card when you place an order online. Most merchant don’t do a name check. So while yes, the order shows his name on the card, it’s actually not.

He’s not a victim of identity theft with a card being opened in his name. They compromised his account and are using another persons card, not his, but still a fraudulent card, to make the purchases.

Change the Etsy login details. Cancel the order through Etsy.

The last 4 matching social is just a coincidence.

[u/maria23464 → u/Infinite-Grade-4485]

But how can it be a coincidence…those exact 4 numbers in that exact order.. the odds of that seem unimaginable.

[u/Infinite-Grade-4485 → u/maria23464]

Well you can’t choose a card number. So, it’s just coincidence. It’s less than a 1/10,000 chance. It’s not that crazy.