Antitrust Feds Put Pinch On Co-Owner Of Firm That Locates People Entitled To Inheritances ("Heir Locators") From Those Dying Without Wills For Allegedly Conspiring With Competitor To Suppress & Eliminate Competition

From the U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.):

• A Salt Lake City-based heir location services provider and its co-owner have been indicted for participating in a conspiracy to allocate customers with another heir location firm, the Department of Justice announced [].
  
  According to the one-count felony indictment filed [] in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Kemp & Associates Inc. and its co-owner and vice president, Daniel J. Mannix, conspired with a competitor to suppress and eliminate competition by agreeing to allocate customers of heir location services sold in the United States between 1999 and 2014.
  
  Heir location firms identify people who may be entitled to an inheritance from the estate of someone who died without a will. The heir location firms then enter into agreements with those people to help secure their inheritances in exchange for a fee.
  
  “For over a decade, the defendants schemed to line their pockets at the expense of beneficiaries,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “These charges underscore the division’s commitment to hold heir location services executives and their companies accountable for cheating heirs whose relatives died without a will.”
  
  With [these] charges, three executives and two companies have been charged as a result of the ongoing federal antitrust investigation into customer allocation, price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the heir location services industry, which is being conducted by the Antitrust Division’s Chicago Office and the FBI’s Salt Lake City Division, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Utah and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois.
  
  Anyone with infomation concerning the focus of this investigation should contact the Antitrust Division’s Chicago Office at 312-984-7200, visit www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.html or call the FBI’s Salt Lake City office at 801-579-1400.

Source: Heir Location Services Company and Co-Owner Charged with Customer Allocation Scheme.

For the indictment, see U.S. v. Kemp & Associates, Inc., et ano.