Inheritance theft

user1977

GDB2222 said:

user1977 said:

What good would a prosecution do anyone? Would you not simply be satisfied with recovering the money (if you can prove anything is missing). 

I suspect the OP is hoping that they go along to the police, who will investigate, and recover the allegedly missing money. The trouble is that the police would require more evidence of a crime before they do anything, and they may not recover anything. . 

Yes, I think some people regard the police as a publicly-funding debt recovery service.

Even if there were sufficient evidence, I would expect the police/prosecutors to regard this as something much more apt to being sorted in the civil courts and not deserving thousands of pounds of public money being spent on it.

uknick

Regarding the comments about police involvement, it never ceases to amaze me how, if somebody steal £000s from an estate people think it is a civil matter first and, only if proven as theft after the injured parties spend many £000s to prove the fraud and/or recover the amount, should the police get involved.

I'm sure those advocating not to involve police would have a completely different view if they lost the amount from fraud implementing by an unknown, to them, 3rd party.

And, just to be clear as to my thinking, I don't think the police should initially get involved if the dispute is between family members as to who should have got what. 

user1977

uknick said:

I'm sure those advocating not to involve police would have a completely different view if they lost the amount from fraud implementing by an unknown, to them, 3rd party.

No, not at all. The standard of proof required is much higher for a prosecution (and bear in mind that there also needs to be mens rea, not merely somebody having more money than they ought to!), the chances of the police/prosecution being interested at all are pretty low, and even if they are, it's very low priority for them so any prosecution could take (literally) years longer than a civil case. And even if a criminal prosecution proceeded, you may need civil proceedings anyway to recover the amount due.