Some believe Elvis did it. Others think Doors front man Jim Morrison is living on a relaxing beach in the Seychelles. After hearing of the death of Andy Kaufman, John Belushi immediately called Kaufman a not so nice name and said Kaufman had ripped him off and faked his own death, which Belushi had often talked about doing, saying it was the best prank anyone could ever pull.
However, most of us don't really buy into the faking-their-own-death thing. Amazingly though, there are a large number of reported cases where everyday people fake their own death in order to receive life insurance money.
Before you start reviewing the coverage amount on your life insurance policy, take a look at just a few recent cases where people attempted to fake their own death.
1.) John Darwin
Darwin's theory of evolution was that species evolved over time to adapt to their needs — not fake their own — de-evolution in order to collect a large life insurance payout.
However, the faked death of British teacher and prison officer John Darwin (no known relation to the scientist Darwin) started out as a missing persons case but he emerged five years later alive and well. He had reportedly died in a canoeing accident. His wife made a claim on his life insurance policy and collected the money, but this wasn't a disappearance case after all and ended up being a case of a "dead man walking."
Darwin was discovered to be alive and well in 2007, and was quickly charged with obtaining a passport fraudulently and claiming insurance money by providing deceitful information to his insurance company. His wife, who apparently handled her husband's death well, was also arrested and eventually convicted for claiming the money on his policy. Apparently, he had been splitting up his "deceased" time living in two different homes, one being in the couple's own house and also in the home next door to them. When arrested, it was discovered they had plans to take canoeing trips to Panama, but instead, on July 23 of 2008, both of them took the trip away from home they'd been planning for five years: to prison for over six years.
2.) Anthony McErlean
This 66-year-old pensioner was sentenced to six years in 2011 for attempting to fake his own death. Living in Central America at the time, McErlean attempted to collect $530K from his life insurance. He went so far as to produce false documents, as well as a death certificate, for proof. Worse yet, the man even posed as his own wife when telling the insurance company he died in 2009 after he was hit by a produce truck in Honduras. He went into great detail too — his "wife" claimed he'd been hit by the truck while changing out a tire on his vehicle.
A judge determined that Anthony had committed "deliberate and calculated fraud" due to all of his actions, and especially by impersonating his wife. All ended up backfiring on McErlean though: he never received a penny from his life insurance policy, and his own insurance company, Ace European Insurance Company, reported its suspicions to the Insurance Fraud Bureau.
McErlean wasn't a novice in death fraud — he had been receiving the pension payments of is dead father-in-law who had died in 2007, even though the father-in-law was actually from one of McErlean's previous marriages.
McErlean pleaded guilty in court to a variety of charges, including making fraudulent claims to the insurer and obtaining a fraudulent passport. Additionally, he was charged for two counts of theft due to the two pension funds he was collecting on. He's now serving out his sentence in Honduras.
3.) Alfredo Sanchez
In December 2010, when Sanchez was preparing documents in order to fake his death and collect $1.25 million from his life insurer, he made one huge error: he failed to keep his fingerprints off of his own fake death certificate. Is it possible to have a dead person's fingerprints on a death certificate? Sure. But it's hard to imagine any undertaker taking a dead person's fingers and pressing them onto the person's death certificate. Unless Australia has a very different and new notarization policy, obtaining a dead person's fingerprints on the person's own death certificate isn't something that's practiced in funeral homes.
Sanchez was a father, and was married to Sophie Sanchez, who was the one left with the job of contacting the insurance company and making the claim. However, after she took the authorities his death certificate from a crematorium, they ended up finding the dead man's fingerprints all over the document.
The husband and wife team were both convicted by a judge, although Sophie Sanchez only received a sentence of two years for the part she played in the fraud. This may seem like a very generous sentencing, especially since prosecutors described her actions as "not very professional."
The couple claim that they came up with the plan because they had accumulated a large amount of debt, and Sanchez convinced his wife to tell his employer that he had passed away while abroad. Amazingly the employers even gave his wife $2,000 so she could go to South America and attend his funeral, contrary to the fact she had told authorities he had been cremated. Once she was arrested though, she quickly confessed and claimed he had pressured her into doing so.
Sanchez remained on the run for a while even after his wife had been caught. Wonder if being a dead man means you're always guaranteed the window seat on a plane…
Attempted fake deaths are actually nothing new to insurance companies, however. According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, life insurance carriers are constantly on the lookout for faked deaths. Faked deaths actually maintain a spot on the top ten types of insurance fraud.
Unfortunately, the CAIF also says that it's hard to say exactly how many similar cases there are. Since there's not a lot of factual data on those that attempt to do so in order to cash in on life insurance, a definite number can be hard to figure out.
A supervisor from Erie Insurance says that fortunately, the U.S. generally has very low numbers of attempted fake deaths, largely attributed to the fact that it's harder to get a fake death certificate that's passable.
One would think that if certain documents can widely be required just to purchase auto insurance that surely a fake death certificate wouldn't even begin to be considered by a life insurance company. Fortunately, fraudsters like Sanchez make this kind of fraud very easy to catch, but odds are, if he had received the payout, insurance companies would have to had to pry their money out of his cold, dead hands.
-Desiree Baughman, InsuranceQuotes.org
Facebook Comments