[00:00:00] Vanishing is one of the longest cons of all. And it's different because instead of someone
[00:00:07] trying to con you, you're trying to con everyone else in the world. Now we've talked about
[00:00:13] people who go voluntarily missing and are trying to escape the law or legal obligations.
[00:00:20] But today we're going to violate that rule and talk about people who try to fake their
[00:00:24] death in an effort to con someone else.
[00:00:27] I always classify it as like an act of stupidity. I mean, it's really the dumbest thing you
[00:00:33] could do in the whole sphere of disappearing. There's no body left behind. And, you know,
[00:00:40] 15 years ago, you could get away with it. But like after John Darwin in the UK did
[00:00:46] it, law enforcement is just hip to it. It's just not a smart thing to do. Because what
[00:00:51] happens is not only do you have law enforcement looking for you, but you know, you could become
[00:00:57] the next media sensation and then everybody's looking for you.
[00:01:14] That's Frank A. Herr, a former skip tracer, consultant, and the author of several books
[00:01:19] on how to disappear. And you know where he stands on that issue. If someone fakes their
[00:01:25] death, it's usually to escape something. A failing business? Financial problems? Or some
[00:01:32] other thing in life that seems unbearable?
[00:01:38] Those who want to simply vanish usually do some planning, but those who want to fake
[00:01:42] their death typically do so with short notice. I'm Jim Grinstead and today we're
[00:01:48] going to talk about faking death. And as Frank A. Herr told us earlier, it's one of the dumbest
[00:01:54] things you can do.
[00:01:58] A Rhode Island man, authorities say faked his own death was apprehended alive in Scotland.
[00:02:03] What officers found was a pathological liar who may have cultivated up to a dozen different
[00:02:09] aliases. Sealed aside is the snappy name for the art of faking your own death.
[00:02:15] It's an idea that's been around for a very long time. After all, it's the most eye-catching
[00:02:21] means of escaping the baggage of your dead end existence and striking out into a new one.
[00:02:26] It's kind of the ultimate fantasy in the sense that in this life we would be able
[00:02:32] to leave behind the mistakes and mundanity and tedium of daily life and be reborn.
[00:02:40] The number one cause of failure for any faked death is a lack of preparation. For many, it represents
[00:02:46] something of an impulse decision. Something has gone wrong and this very specific drastic
[00:02:52] cause of evasive action has come to seem like the only way to solve it. Desperation,
[00:02:57] after all, makes people do strange things. White-collar criminals make for enthusiastic
[00:03:03] pseudosides. That's from the Vice Program, The Business of Crime. And that summation is
[00:03:10] common in the research I've done and the people I've spoken with.
[00:03:23] Let's take the case of Julie Weaver. She was handed a federal prison sentence of 42 months
[00:03:28] for healthcare fraud. After her prison term, Weaver will be under supervised release for three years.
[00:03:39] She's also been ordered to pay restitution totaling $289,000 as determined by the Veterans
[00:03:45] Administration and approved by the court. In May 2020, Weaver along with family members
[00:03:54] staged her fall from the Grandview State Park overlook. They then falsely reported her
[00:04:00] plunge off Grandview ledges, triggering a massive search operation involving state,
[00:04:05] federal and local authorities along with numerous volunteers.
[00:04:17] Eventually the West Virginia State Police found Weaver hiding in a closet at her own home.
[00:04:23] She and her husband are currently facing charges in Raleigh County Magistered Court for multiple
[00:04:28] felony and misdemeanor offenses related to this false emergency report.
[00:04:36] Ahern said lots of people use water in order to fake their death, believing that police
[00:04:41] will assume the body is washed away and won't be found.
[00:04:46] Actually there is a case from Correcting Australia where they had a leg that was
[00:04:50] bit by a shark or something like that and they tried to use the leg as the guy's body
[00:04:55] but they figured it out through DNA pretty much.
[00:04:59] There is also another interesting case too, I forget where it was.
[00:05:03] A lot of times individuals will fake their death overseas because it's easier to get
[00:05:06] like a death certificate signed off but the insurance companies, you know,
[00:05:10] they're aware of it and what they did in this one case, they just didn't believe
[00:05:14] it but they had the guy's death certificate and so they had fingerprints taken on the death
[00:05:19] certificate and ironically the dead guy's fingerprint was on the death certificate.
[00:05:26] So I mean, you know what I always look at it from the perspective, people who investigate
[00:05:31] for a living, that's what they do, you know, and they're tenacious and they want to
[00:05:36] solve that case and you can't make any mistakes and they just plug along
[00:05:40] and they find that thing on there.
[00:05:43] Right, and you notice it's just some guy who sits there says hey, let's check
[00:05:46] the fingerprints on this. I mean, who would think about that?
[00:05:49] I would never think about doing something like that.
[00:05:53] I'm a summer guy. I'll be on the porch enjoying a cool drink and reading.
[00:05:58] It doesn't get any better unless someone else does the cooking.
[00:06:02] I'm not going to spend the day in fresh air only to eat processed foods.
[00:06:06] If I'm not eating fresh, I'm wasting one of the best seasons of the year.
[00:06:11] Fortunately, Factor comes to my rescue. They send fresh meals to me that can be
[00:06:17] cooked up in minutes. I can go back to the porch with a great meal and enjoy the sunset.
[00:06:23] I'm not into program diets. I like to chef's choice meals but if I wanted
[00:06:28] Keto, protein, vegan or anything else, they can provide it.
[00:06:34] Premium meals could include steak, shrimp, broccolini or asparagus.
[00:06:40] The meals come prepped and are customizable. You can get add-ons for breakfast, lunch or snacks.
[00:06:47] And when I head out on vacation, Factor will pause my surface until I get back.
[00:06:52] Plus I love to grill so I can choose one of Factor's meals during the week
[00:06:57] and fire up the charcoal on weekends.
[00:07:00] Be good to yourself. Enjoy the warm weather.
[00:07:04] Great foods from Factor along with some money saving discounts I'm about to tell you about.
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[00:07:35] Faking a death is rarely thought out but sometimes an event happens,
[00:07:40] an opportunity is presented and someone makes an instant decision.
[00:07:45] One of those times was on September 11th 2001 when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center
[00:07:51] were targets of a terrorist attack.
[00:07:54] About a year after the attacks, the New York Times looked into how many fake insurance claims
[00:07:59] were made by people saying they had lost family members in the attack.
[00:08:03] Here's AI voice Brian reading from the Times article.
[00:08:07] When a federal judge recently sentenced Aubrey Lee Price to 30 years in prison
[00:08:12] for bank fraud, embezzlement and other crimes,
[00:08:16] it closed a chapter on the once successful businessman's sensational criminal saga.
[00:08:22] Price went from a devout Christian minister and trusted financial advisor
[00:08:27] to a schema who wiped out many of his client's life savings
[00:08:31] and then faked his own death to avoid taking responsibility for what he had done.
[00:08:37] When a routine traffic stop in Georgia resulted in his arrest nearly 18 months after his disappearance,
[00:08:43] Price acknowledged that he had become a drug dealer.
[00:08:47] It's unbelievably sad, said Special Agent Ed Sutcliffe in our Atlanta field office.
[00:08:52] Most of Price's victims had worked 30 or 40 years to save for retirement.
[00:08:57] They were living off those funds, said Sutcliffe.
[00:09:00] They had to learn from us that Price, their friend and advisor was missing
[00:09:04] and all their money was gone.
[00:09:06] Price told investigators he got involved in the investment business
[00:09:10] to help fund his mission efforts overseas.
[00:09:13] He worked for two well-known investment firms and later started his own company.
[00:09:18] Many of his clients were personal friends from Georgia where Price lived.
[00:09:22] Some knew him from church.
[00:09:24] He gave seminars on how to be a wise Christian investor.
[00:09:28] Others had been on mission trips with him.
[00:09:31] Everyone believed Price was on the up and up, Sutcliffe said.
[00:09:34] He had investors, a solid track record
[00:09:37] and there was no reason to doubt his ability or his honesty.
[00:09:41] He eventually gained access to more than $21 million
[00:09:45] and lost more than $16 million through risky investments.
[00:09:49] In the end, Price's deception of more than $70 million.
[00:09:55] In 2012 when he knew his house of financial cards was about to crumble,
[00:10:00] Price faked his suicide on a boat in Key West, Florida
[00:10:04] and fled first to Mexico and later to Florida
[00:10:08] where he grew and sold marijuana and other drugs
[00:10:11] and sometimes served as a bodyguard for prostitutes.
[00:10:16] Music
[00:10:34] A Milwaukee woman also failed to fake her death during the 9-11 tragedy.
[00:10:39] Dorothy Johnson and her daughter Twilla McKee
[00:10:42] were charged with insurance fraud
[00:10:44] and attempted theft claiming that Johnson had died in the World Trade Center attacks.
[00:10:49] The mother and daughter submitted two life insurance claims,
[00:10:52] totaling $135,000 with McKee listed as the beneficiary on both policies.
[00:11:02] The scheme was uncovered due to two mistakes.
[00:11:05] Johnson's thumbprint was found on a letter to Konseco Direct Life Insurance Company
[00:11:10] and she also filed an insurance claim for a car accident
[00:11:13] that occurred 12 days after the alleged date of her death.
[00:11:18] Damn fingerprints!
[00:11:20] Music
[00:11:24] Another not-so-clever attempt was made in 2009 by Marcus Schrincker.
[00:11:29] The Indiana money manager was facing financial difficulties in multiple lawsuits.
[00:11:35] He took off in a small plane
[00:11:37] telling air traffic controllers that his windshield had shattered and he was injured.
[00:11:41] Schrecker later confessed that he set the plane on autopilot.
[00:11:45] Parish shooted over the Gulf of Mexico,
[00:11:48] hoping the plane would crash its seat to fake his death.
[00:11:51] However, the plane ran out of fuel and crashed near Milton, Florida.
[00:11:57] He was discovered by authorities at a campground two days later.
[00:12:02] Perhaps one of the most famous cases of faking death goes to John Darwin.
[00:12:07] Darwin was a British teacher and prison officer.
[00:12:10] He was thought to have died in a canoeing accident in 2002.
[00:12:15] He was reported missing after failing to report for work.
[00:12:18] A large-scale sea search turned up the wreckage of his canoe, but not his body.
[00:12:24] In December 2007, Darwin walked into a police station in London,
[00:12:29] claiming to have no memory of the past five years.
[00:12:33] His wife, Anne, who had sold her properties in England and moved to Panama three months earlier,
[00:12:39] acted surprised at his return.
[00:12:42] In fact, Darwin had been living with her since just days after his disappearance.
[00:12:47] He'd also traveled to Panama with her in 2006 as evidenced by a photo of the couple posted to a website.
[00:12:54] Both John and Anne were convicted of fraud in 2008.
[00:12:58] John was sentenced to six years and three months in prison.
[00:13:02] Anne was sentenced to six years and six months.
[00:13:05] Perhaps the person who knows the most about how to fake your death is Elizabeth Greenwood,
[00:13:11] who researched the process and wrote a book about what she learned.
[00:13:15] She came just one step away from becoming legally dead.
[00:13:20] I did manage to get my own death certificate in Manila.
[00:13:31] I had heard the Philippines mention time and again in my research and reporting
[00:13:36] as kind of a place that's a real hotbed where these overseas death frauds,
[00:13:40] usually for life insurance purposes, will take place.
[00:13:44] You can purchase something there called a death kit,
[00:13:50] which has everything you need soup to nuts to fake a death.
[00:13:54] Your death certificate, witness statements, police statements.
[00:13:58] You can hire mourners for your fake funeral to weep over your coffin.
[00:14:07] There are black market morgues in the Philippines where you can purchase a body
[00:14:11] to cremate immediately and try to pass off as yourself.
[00:14:15] So I knew that this was a place I had to visit.
[00:14:18] After my journey into the world of death fraud for six years
[00:14:22] of research and reporting, speaking to people who had done it themselves,
[00:14:26] speaking to family members who were affected,
[00:14:29] who either had thought a loved one or parent had died and turned out they weren't,
[00:14:34] and after handling my own death certificate in my hands,
[00:14:38] I can confidently say faking your death is probably not the greatest idea
[00:14:42] unless you have a seriously good motive, which I have yet to find.
[00:14:47] If you had just spent the same amount of effort in your first life
[00:14:51] making that as great and as rich as you could,
[00:14:54] you'd be so much happier than you are now.
[00:14:57] So I'd say don't fake your death.
[00:15:00] I don't think there's any harm in a little fantasy though.
[00:15:38] Fruit Loops were serving up true crime with a side of history, society, culture and some fun.
[00:15:43] Listen to Fruit Loops, Zero Killers of Color on Spotify, Google Play, Apple Podcast
[00:15:47] or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:15:56] I've just told you about how people make stupid mistakes when trying to fake their deaths,
[00:16:00] making it fairly easy for the police to catch on.
[00:16:04] It's kind of easy and it's kind of standard
[00:16:06] because if you look at when somebody disappears, especially when they fake their death,
[00:16:10] if you look at the five days prior or the week prior,
[00:16:14] they do things, whether it be transfer funds, pull out cash, get extra medicine.
[00:16:22] They kind of take care of business in their life.
[00:16:25] It's a big mistake because I've worked on some cases where people fake their death
[00:16:29] and one guy, some wealthy guy supposedly fell off of a boat,
[00:16:33] but ironically he went to visit his mother like two days before,
[00:16:37] but he hasn't seen her in a year and he had some medical issue
[00:16:41] that he actually requested his medical file from the doctor.
[00:16:45] So there are things like this that people do
[00:16:49] that they just don't realize that law enforcement or a private investigator
[00:16:53] who's investigating the insurance case is going to look into.
[00:16:57] Then there's Margaret Sweeney, who was reported to be dead on a Friday night,
[00:17:02] but police picked her up the next day.
[00:17:05] One of her friends told the Franklin, North Carolina police department
[00:17:09] that she was either going to be killed or was already dead.
[00:17:14] She was found alive the next day in a neighboring town after police simply pinged her phone.
[00:17:19] Then there was a woman who didn't fake her death.
[00:17:22] She faked a life.
[00:17:24] Andy Schmead is a photographer and came to New York to study.
[00:17:28] During her time in the city, she noticed the skyscrapers where the rich and famous live.
[00:17:33] She wondered what the city must look like from those balconies
[00:17:37] for people to pay millions of dollars for that view.
[00:17:40] So she pretended to be a billionaire looking for a place to live.
[00:17:45] She told her story to Vice.
[00:17:47] The cheapest property I've been to was 10 million
[00:17:51] and the most expensive was 85 million.
[00:17:54] They manipulate the cities to the disadvantage of everyone else in the cities.
[00:18:00] My name is Andy Schmead and in 2016 I spent three months in New York
[00:18:05] at an artist residency program.
[00:18:07] Basically this whole idea started with the biggest cliché
[00:18:11] that I went up to the Empire State Building and I saw the views
[00:18:15] and I basically realized that there are lots of buildings
[00:18:19] that are as tall or even taller than the Empire State Building
[00:18:23] and I just basically was really curious about what the view from those buildings look like.
[00:18:29] That's when I started to work on my book and my project.
[00:18:33] I chose 25 buildings, high ultra luxury towers.
[00:18:37] But you don't just walk into those penthouses as you might in suburbia.
[00:18:42] She needed help and she found it in a real estate agent.
[00:18:45] My goal was really to show those views that are considered to be the best views
[00:18:52] you can privately own in New York.
[00:18:54] First I really just wanted to photograph the views or the book.
[00:18:57] As I was going deeper and deeper in this word,
[00:19:00] it became more and more obvious that it's like something totally bizarre and crazy.
[00:19:05] I was like laying in bed and really I was just thinking
[00:19:09] how could I get into those buildings?
[00:19:11] I remember I told about the project to the curator who was working at the residency
[00:19:16] and she told me no way they would ever let you in without a credit check.
[00:19:21] The only way for that is to pretend to be a billionaire who is searching for an apartment.
[00:19:28] From the moment on that I started to work on the project,
[00:19:31] this was pretty much the only thing I could think about.
[00:19:34] Write it down, check the address, go home, check if there's any real estate available,
[00:19:38] call the agency and usually next day go and see it and take a picture of the view.
[00:19:44] And so really for three months I was living in between this Gabriella
[00:19:49] which was my billionaire persona and myself back and forth on the A-line from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
[00:19:55] My name is Daniel Rosenstein.
[00:19:57] I've worked in real estate for four years.
[00:20:00] I met Andy two years ago when she was infiltrating New York's most exclusive properties.
[00:20:06] I was doing Airbnb in my apartment in the Upper West Side.
[00:20:11] And first I remember that he asked me,
[00:20:13] what are you doing in New York?
[00:20:14] And then he said he's a real estate agent.
[00:20:16] I was actually a bit hesitant to tell him what I came here for.
[00:20:20] She told me that she was making a book.
[00:20:22] So I think at first I was like, oh is she mocking our profession?
[00:20:26] I'm just a pawn in your project here.
[00:20:28] And then the more she was talking about it,
[00:20:30] the more I saw her point of view which is almost nobody has access to these apartments.
[00:20:37] You have to go through a doorman, you have to reach out to a real estate agent.
[00:20:39] It's not a normal real estate market where you can show up to an open house.
[00:20:43] She asked a few questions, I think how to navigate getting into buildings.
[00:20:51] I told her to use the term we're looking for a pietitère or second home in the city.
[00:20:56] A lot of really wealthy people look for second, third, fourth, fifth homes.
[00:21:00] And she at that point had essentially created her whole persona.
[00:21:05] Gabriella is my actual middle name because at the beginning I didn't know
[00:21:09] if they would check my passport ever.
[00:21:11] And actually at some of the properties they did check it.
[00:21:15] And I remember back then I got really obsessed by many of these small details
[00:21:19] that I need to do my nails and I need to have proper shoes, proper bag.
[00:21:25] In order to do this project I needed to bring my camera and photograph the view.
[00:21:30] This made me obviously very unusual in the eyes of the agents.
[00:21:34] But I also realized that the stranger I act, the more convincing it is
[00:21:39] that I'm actually a billionaire and I just don't give a shit.
[00:21:43] I was really, really nervous at this very first viewing.
[00:21:46] The agent started to ask me if I have a chef, if I have a nanny,
[00:21:51] if we have private chauffeur.
[00:21:53] So I just randomly answered yes and no.
[00:21:56] And all of these answers kind of became part of what Gabriella was.
[00:22:02] As she worked, she also thought about poverty.
[00:22:05] The people who were looked down upon.
[00:22:08] I think the way poverty is usually portrayed is from the bottom.
[00:22:12] So talk about homelessness or you talk about people who cannot afford housing.
[00:22:17] I think when you see it from this very top of the sphere,
[00:22:21] it's somehow is also very telling.
[00:22:24] The buildings that you can see from every single corner of the city
[00:22:29] are these ultra-luxury real estate which are not accessible for anyone really.
[00:22:34] Apartments and buildings are standing 60 to 70% empty.
[00:22:40] She also realized that these palaces were cold.
[00:22:43] They weren't purchased as a place to live.
[00:22:46] Then you would have the oak floor which is always the best type of oak floor.
[00:22:50] And there's like really nothing that would make any of these buildings stand out to be honest.
[00:22:56] But it's not really surprising when you realize that it's solely a form of investment.
[00:23:02] Most of the cases.
[00:23:04] So it's really not about living and it's not about having a soul.
[00:23:08] And it shows. It's really obvious when you are there.
[00:23:12] One of the most striking things was how agents are trying to always go out of their way
[00:23:18] to tell me that no one else lives in these buildings,
[00:23:21] that I'm not going to have any neighbors.
[00:23:24] A lot of these billionaire roadtowers are investments for overseas and local people.
[00:23:29] They rent them out or they'll just own them, have them sit empty for a number of years
[00:23:33] and resell them. It's a safe investment.
[00:23:35] It holds value over time.
[00:23:37] But what that translates to is building, sitting empty.
[00:23:40] There's a trickle-down effect.
[00:23:42] So once the hyper-expensive properties become even more expensive
[00:23:48] it raises the value of everything else beneath it.
[00:23:51] Gabriella knew she could walk away from this imaginary life.
[00:23:55] She wouldn't live on the streets.
[00:23:57] She would have a comfortable life.
[00:23:59] She wouldn't have to fake her death.
[00:24:01] She only had to give up a fake life.
[00:24:04] But those who fake their death generally do so out of fear or greed.
[00:24:08] And emotionally they feel trapped.
[00:24:11] So we end where we began with Frank A. Hurt.
[00:24:14] This is his viewpoint on why people choose to fake their deaths.
[00:24:18] And it's almost a cathartic thing and most people who contact me are never going to disappear.
[00:24:23] And I pretty much tell them that.
[00:24:25] Just because you think you should doesn't mean you should.
[00:24:29] It's a large fantasy for people.
[00:24:31] Most of us have been in situations where life was hard at some point
[00:24:35] and the idea of just like driving into the sunset just sounds really cool.
[00:24:41] And it sounds exotic.
[00:24:48] If you enjoy this show, please give us a 5-star rating wherever you listen.
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[00:24:58] Your ratings really do make a difference.
[00:25:01] Thanks for listening.
[00:25:03] Scams and Cons is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network.
[00:25:13] Did you guys hear about that couple that went on vacation and one spouse murdered the other?
[00:25:18] In fact, the entire vacation was planned just so that they could make the murder look like an accident.
[00:25:24] Ah, so like a slaycation?
[00:25:26] Oh boy! Sounds like a fun new true crime podcast to me.
[00:25:33] On every episode of Slaycation, we'll examine true cases of people who were killed while on vacation.
[00:25:39] Was it murder?
[00:25:41] Or just a horrible accident?
[00:25:44] That's up to you and the law to decide.
[00:25:47] But either way, if you leave for your vacation in the plane
[00:25:52] and come home under the plane
[00:25:55] you've definitely gone on a slaycation.
[00:25:57] Join us every week for a fascinating new episode.
[00:26:00] 911, what's your emergency?
[00:26:02] But make sure to pack your body bags because getting away can be murder.
[00:26:06] This is Slaycation.