Imagine you’ve cornered the market on selling
knock off postage stamps. Regular stamps, vintage stamps, stamps for
kids, it’s all fair game! You are making, well, not tons of money because
the stamp market isn’t as lucrative as it once was, but you are making a decent profit. The only problem is that the United States
Postal Service has caught on to you. Someone sold you out and now you need to disappear
fast. Postal workers already have a reputation for
being grumpy. Who can blame them? They work six days a week. But you have really made them disgruntled. Fleets of mail trucks and armies of mail satchel
carrying soldiers are out for blood. The only way out: fake your own death. “How hard can it be?” you think. Faking one’s death goes all the way back
to the Talmud. This book of Jewish Laws dates from around
the fifth century AD. It shows that the idea of faking your own
death is nothing new. And ever since the mid 1800’s when life
insurance was introduced to the world, people have been trying to fake their own death to
collect on their policies. Faking your own death can be a lucrative business,
maybe even more lucrative than selling forged stamps. You decide to do a little research to find
the best way to go about faking your own death. If caught for forging postage stamps you could
be sentenced to five years in prison and fined for all the fake stamps. But that’d be nothing compared to what the
angry postal workers would do. They could tie you up, stick stamps all over
your entire body, and ship you to the North Pole, without a return address! “No way!” you think, “It’s way too
cold up there with Santa and his reindeer.” You’ve got to disappear and for good. What if you faked your death in a plane crash? It could happen right? You’re out for a flight in your private
jet, paid for with counterfeit stamp profits. You do some research to see if it has been
done before. Sure enough you find a story about a man named
Marcus Schrenker, who was having all kinds of legal problems. He was stealing from investors and forging
signatures at his business. Schrenker took off from an Indiana airport
and was flying to Florida when he sent out a distress call. Moments later reports started coming in of
a plane crash near Schrenker’s last known location. Schrenker was reported dead, but his body
was never found. The police were suspicious because of his
legal troubles. They sent detectives to locations that Schrenker
had been seen before the crash. Eventually they found him. He was roasting marshmallows over an open
fire at a campground in Florida. Apparently he had jumped out of the plane
after calling in the distress call. He pulled the ripcord on his parachute and
gently glided down, watching as his plane crashed. “Well he got caught by the police, so that
didn’t work out so great for Schrenker,” you think. Plus you kind of want your private jet intact
after you fake your own death, so that you can still travel the world. It would do you no good if you crashed it
and your fastest mode of transportation was consumed in a fiery wreck. Let’s try something else. You often go on exotic vacations using funds
from your imitation stamp operation and posing as a courier. Again something that postal service wants
to hunt you down for. They take impersonating a postal worker very
seriously. “Maybe I can fly to a semi dangerous country
with political unrest. I can pay someone to claim I’ve been killed
by rebels.” You are full of schemes. You start doing research into faking your
own death through being killed by militant rebels. Sure enough you come across a story about
Gandaruban Subramaniam, a 60-year-old Singaporean businessman. He was being sued by creditors because his
rental car business failed. To escape the debt collectors Subramaniam
had his wife claim he had been killed by Tamil Tiger rebels. This allowed her to collect on three life-insurance
policies. After the money was collected, Subramaniam
moved to Singapore using a fake passport. Authorities eventually located him and tried
him for insurance fraud. It probably would have been easier just to
pay off the debt. “Death by rebels? Fake passports? That’s a lot of work,” you think. If you’re going to fake die, you want it
to be in a little more style. And a lot easier. Maybe being killed by rebels is too extravagant. What about just faking a murder? “Yeah that could work,” you muse. Then you find a story about a Music Row attorney
named William Grothe. He faked his own murder and then posed as
his murderer. He parked his car in a rural location and
waited a couple days. Then he phoned the authorities saying he had
killed William Grothe and where to find the evidence. He must have been laughing to himself as he
hung up the payphone, thinking he had pulled one over on the cops. The police found this series of events just
slightly suspicious. Why would the murderer give himself away? Upon investigation and acting on what the
“murderer” said, the police found the possessions of William Grothe scattered near
a riverbank. It seemed almost too obvious that they were
the belongings of William Grothe. Every single item had identification with
them. They later found and sentenced Grothe. He had a one million dollar life insurance
policy he was getting ready to collect on. Grothe probably should have just stuck with
being a lawyer instead of a faking his murder. “Note to self. Maybe a murder would work, but don’t pose
as your own murderer,” you say out loud. This fake your own death thing is complicated. It seems that when fake dying, the body or
lack thereof, seems to always be a hiccup in the plan. What if you could make sure that there was
no body and that no one would even expect to find one? What if you could fake your own death by cremation? “That’s it!” you exclaim. You’re sure no one has tried faking their
death by cremation before. I mean it’s perfect. There is no body to find. You just get a bunch of ash and put it in
an urn and you’re good to go. You decided to just check real quick to see
if anyone could possibly be as brilliant as you are. Then you stumble onto the story of Alfredo
Sanchez. Alfredo Sanchez was deep in credit card debt
and defaulting on his loans. He and his wife plotted to fake his death
and cremation. Sanchez’s wife called his employer saying
that he had died of a heart attack and had been cremated, as his will had specified. She then began collecting on her late husband’s
insurance and pension. The company hired an investigator after hearing
rumors that Alfredo Sanchez was still alive. They eventually found him living in Australia. The kicker was they discovered him because
he had remarried his wife in Australia and was located by the investigator after his
wedding day. “Good thing I’m not married!” you chuckle. But then again, who would trust enough to
lie to everyone that you had died and been cremated? Also, would the police be able to tell if
the ash in the urn was from a burnt log instead of a burnt body? This seems very complicated even for a mastermind
like you. You ponder other ways to fake your own death. Well if fire and cremation is too complicated
let’s try the opposite. What about faking your death by water? What if you faked a drowning? You dive into research around accounts of
people who faked their death by drowning. Those tedious postal workers will never catch
you if your body is thought to be at the bottom of the ocean! You come across a few accounts of people who
have faked their own death by drowning. John Darwin was claimed to have drowned to
death while kayaking. He was facing possible bankruptcy and needed
a way out. But there was a breakdown in communication
between John and his wife. Apparently, he called her to drop him off
at a train station, just before she called the police to report him missing from drowning. Later John Darwin walked into the police station
claiming he thought he was just considered a missing person. The police didn’t buy it. It is always important to get your stories
straight when faking your own death. Another faked drowning was of someone of slightly
more notoriety. John Stonehouse, a former member of British
Parliament, faked his death by drowning so he could start a new life with his mistress. “The things we do for love,” you think. But this fake drowning gets even more interesting. He was later found in Australia operating
under the name Joseph Markham, which was the name of the dead husband of a constituent. Stonehouse was arrested for operating a fraudulent
business and served three years in jail. When he was released, he immediately married
his mistress, who had waited for him to get out of jail. Really, the things we do for love. The craziest part of the whole story is that
it was later discovered Stonehouse was a Communist spy! “What a wild story,” you sigh. You’re not sure drowning is the best way
to fake your own death anymore. What if all your other dark secrets come to
light if you get caught? Other than just the forged stamp thing of
course. How about dying of a disease? Faking death by cancer? That’d be messed up because of how terrible
the disease is. So messed up it could work. You do a little further research. You find that faking your death by cancer
has been tried before. A woman by the name of Allison Matera told
her church choir she was dying of cancer. Of course the members were devastated and
tried to make her as comfortable as possible. When Matera was claimed to be in hospice,
the choir members began receiving calls from a woman claiming to be a nurse to give them
updates. The odd thing was that the nurse sounded remarkably
similar to Allison herself. When they received a call claiming that Allison
Matera had died, the caller also sounded very similar to the deceased. It became obvious that something was not quite
right when a woman who bore a very close resemblance to Allison was at the funeral. When police confronted Allison Matera she
admitted to faking her own death because she had attachment issues and wanted to drive
her choir friends away. “That’s crazy. Not even I would stoop that low,” you say. Maybe you’re missing something. Maybe there is an easier way to fake your
own death and get away with it. I mean this is the age of the internet and
technology. Could you fake your own death with something
as simple as a text? Something like: Hi USPS, it’s me, the guy
you’re after for selling all those fake stamps, I’m dead so there’s no reason
to look for me. Thanks, bye. I mean is it really that crazy? You use your smartphone to see if it’s been
done before. Apparently a woman named Dianne Craven texted
her boyfriend that she had died. Craven posed as her brother and told her boyfriend
that she had died from a brain aneurysm. But then three months after her supposed passing,
Dianne’s boyfriend saw a picture of her online. Somehow you feel like texting the Postal Service
that you had died probably wouldn’t work. Social media makes it really difficult to
stay dead if your death was faked. After researching all of these crazy stories
about people faking their own death and being caught, you decide it’d just be better to
turn yourself in. The police would protect you from the United
States Postal Service workers. You head to the authorities and tell them
the whole story. They look at you with a shocked expression,
as you explain your whole counterfeit stamp operation. You tell them it’s been a wild ride and
that you want to turn over a new leaf. The officer in charge looks at you with a
frown. He shakes his head and says, “those people
at the postal service can be really scary. I mean they work six days a week no matter
what the weather is. When they find you, they are going to make
your life miserable. You probably should have just faked your own
death.” What do you think the craziest way to fake
your own death would be? Let us know in the comments! People have done some insane things to get
out of a bad situation. All we know is that it would be insane not
to watch another episode of The Infographics Show. So why don’t you check out our video on
50 Insane Cold War Facts That Will Shock You! Or maybe you’d be more into the video How
Insane is El Chapo's Prison Cell Security? Either way the videos will be better than
faking your own death! Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t
forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next time!
