'I thought I was being scammed but I actually inherited a stranger's £400k estate'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A mum was convinced she was the target of scammers after being told she’d inherited a share of £400k from a stranger.Lorraine Gesell, 60, received a phone call telling her she was a relative of a man she’d never even heard of.An agent from Finders International, which helps find missing beneficiaries, told Lorraine she was entitled to inherit some of the valuable estate of Raymond Barry Howson, who died alone at the age of 85 in September 2021.When Finders International were tasked with finding possible relatives of Raymond’s, they quickly established that he had never married or had any children.For much of his life, Raymond had worked as an airline cabin crew and owned a two-bedroom flat in Twickenham.Born in Altrincham, Raymond was the only child of Harry Howson, an accountant, and Lena Iris Moores.It turned out that Lorraine’s maternal grandfather, George Moores, and Raymond’s mother were siblings.Lorraine’s mother had emigrated from Cheshire to Canada in 1951, where Lorraine was born and brought up.The Manchester Evening News reports that in total, Finders International found 47 beneficiaries across New Zealand, Canada, Australia and throughout the UK – each taking a share of Raymond’s estate.Simonne Llewellyn, CEO of Finders International, the UK’s largest professional probate research genealogists and stars of BBC TV’s long running Heir Hunting series, said: “While this might be unexpected, it’s not totally uncommon, particularly with large extended families and where people emigrated from the UK a long time ago.“While we don’t know what Raymond’s wishes were, had we not found these beneficiaries the money would have eventually gone to the treasury.”She added: “When somebody dies intestate, their estate becomes a