It's just come up and made me wonder. Is it illegal to fake your own death? I know that doing so often involves doing other illegal things in the process, but does the actual act of faking your own death in itself constitute a crime?

faking your own death IS illegal, but that's all i know. not sure what the deal is if you go missing and after seven years you're declared dead, but you're not dead.

Homer, I specifically asked you if that dummy was to fake your own death, and you said no!

I suppose since a death certificate is a legal document, it's fraud even without collecting on insurance or skipping out on an indictment, or whatever. But I don’t know the actual law.

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lol remember that episode of shameless where frank faked his own death and sat bolt upright in the coffin in a white suit? i wanna do that.

i bet it is illegal, on some really tedious tax/inheritance grounds or something.

I dunno, wouldn't it only be fraud if you yourself had signed the death certificate? I mean, if someone declares you dead, surely that's not your fault?

Well, if this law actually exists, I would imagine the wording is replete with phrases like "Knowingly and willfully instigated a course of action which would reasonably be likely to lead to..."

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Sounds about right. I guess it would be hard to convince someone that you just felt like throwing a dummy full of guts over a waterfall dressed in your clothes with several forms of your own ID on it, just for shits and giggles.

thats very tom sawyer

Well considering the average value of property/pension/possessions/insurance etc. moving around after someone dies is huge even for an average older working adult then it makes sense. Setting up all that stuff is way stricter than your usual transactions, what with the potential fraud and laundering etc.

There's also the legal and financial implications of just letting someone slip through the cracks like that. Imagine arresting someone, and uh, they're dead, except it's them! I'm guessing it just means they have to let you go without a charge because you're a non-person, and not utterly ass-rape you with a pile of charges for trying to evade the system, oh no.

Given all that I'm guessing faking your own death is in the 'pretty damn illegal' column.

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no, but I think it's frowned upon.

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Bump because that crooked Hedge Fund manager who had been sentenced to twenty years and disapeared leaving his car on a bridge with keys in the ignition, pills in the car and 'Suicide Is Painless' written in dust on the hood turned up alive the other day.

It does not appear that he is facing charges related to faking his own death. He's being charged with jumping bail, which could add ten years to his sentance, and he's no longer going to serve at a presumably cushier federal prison for people with medical problems (the latter appears to have been at the discretion of the judge and not officially an extra charge).

I'm still not entirely sure if there isn't a law against faking your own death, although this adds weight to the idea that there isn't. It is within possibility that he simply hasn't been charged yet because the fake-death law is state (as are most crimes in the US that one can think of offhand) and the charges he tried to flee are federal, or that the DA just isn't bothering because because the dude is going away for a long, long time regardless. However, this is probably not the case, just because it likely would have been mentioned in the articles.

More likely, if there is a law he's not being charged with, he's not being charged because no one ever believed he was dead. The statie who investigated at Bear Mountain bridge said that no one saw him, jumping or leaving the car, which was found only moments after being turned off, and that the Hudson washes up the suicides off that bridge (apparently, it averages over 10 a year) pretty quickly. A bench warrent was issued for his arrest the day he didn't report to serve his sentence despite the car, they took the search international within days, his girlfriend was charged with aiding and abetting his flight two weeks ago, and he only surrendered yesterday.

Not relevant to the topic, but I didn't know until yesterday, although I've been vaguely aware of the story since he fled, that he was living in the town I grew up in! I clicked the link on the for more stories on the topic, and the NYT did seek out a neighbor, who could only offer that 'It's a hi and goodbye town, people keep to themselves.'

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Despite all this, try it anyway and tell us what happens. Photos plz.

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Whatever happened with that British canoe guy who faked his death and ended up in... where was it? Paraguay or something?

I know there was fraud and insurance stuff going on there, though.

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Twas Panama. And aye, he was charged with fraud when it was all discovered, but no progress since then. You know how long it takes the authorities in this country to pull their shit together on just about everything, so maybe he'll go to court in a few years.

He doesn't seem to have been hit up with any charge specifically related to faking his death, though.

I don't think there is such a law forbidding it, at least here. But there must surely be some "small print" about it in life insurance policies and such. Idk b/c I don't have any?

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- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

Yes, very. Considering most people fake their own deaths to escape debt or criminal convictions, yes it is very illegal and unless you have 4 best friends who are each one a cop, a medical examiner, a mortician, and a vital records clerk, then get that idea out of you head.

most likely just for legal reasons
youre not allowed control of your your legal persona or "strawman" self or whateva
fooooor some reeeeason
psh
fuckrers

You're not defrauding anyone or committing some type of illegality by merely "faking" your own death...... if you profit off of it in some manner (ie insurance, etc) then it's likely that you're defrauding someone/something.

Ah, the strawman....... hmmm.....