The whole "not being marked as deceased" thing really throws a wrench into the excuse given for this prior of "they leave it up so that any files that link to this aren't left dead later." Because you could do that easily and still mark them as dead to prevent any fraud from happening.

But since they didn't do even that basic amount of bookkeeping work, that means there was absolutely a large amount of fraud happening and they just couldn't care enough to take 2 seconds of work to prevent it.