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Faking Your Own Death: We All Do It, But Why? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: shock and it's just us because we don't know where
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Jerry is. But that's okay, because this is stuff you
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: should do.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Oh well, Jerry may have engaged in pseudoside because she's
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: so tired of working with us. Yeah, then she didn't
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: want to tell us. Yeah, that's one reason somebody might
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: want to get out of their life or you know,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: not for real. But that's what pseudoside is. It's spaking
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: your own death.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that definitely does sound like something Jerry would do.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like she couldn't bring herself to tell us, so
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: she's like, well maybe I could just disappear.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Right, So, yes, pseudoside I'd never known that before. But
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: pseudo side is a different term for faking your own death,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: like pseudo like fake inside death.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: So I don't think side means death. I think it's
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: a little worse than that, but you get the point. Yeah,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: And I don't remember what brought this up. I just
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: had this idea to do this one. I don't remember
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: what it was. But it turns out that there's there's like,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: this is a thing. It's not just something you see
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: in the movies. Like a surprising amount I don't want
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: to say a lot, but a surprising amount of people
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: have tried this. Yeah, and it's probable that even more
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: people have tried it than we think, because the only
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: ones that we know about are the ones who got caught.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Presumably there's plenty of people out there who tried this
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: and were was successful.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or tried it and failed but didn't get caught.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Okay, sure, Yeah, that's that's a good point too. I
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: hadn't thought about that one.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: As you would say there are three trunches.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: That's right. I wouldn't say that because I love myself.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: No, but you're the trench master.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Oh that's so like twenty ten. You rather forgot about that.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Can you believe that was fifteen years ago?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Hey, tronches were hot.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were all raged, So why would anybody do this? Chuck?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I think we should start with that.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean one of them, I listed get out
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: of a personal relationship. I mean I was kind of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: joking about Jerry, but you know, it would be probably
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: more like I want to leave my fam, you know,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: if it's a movie at least, although this happens real life.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I want to leave my family they're so boring, Yeah,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and go set up another life with this new family
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: that's going to solve all my problems. It seems like
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: the most common is probably a financial thing. You're either
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: have some huge debt you're trying to get out of,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: or you're trying to commit insurance fraud to get a
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: big payout or something, or you've embezzled from your company
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: or something like that.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Apparently, so Olivia helped us out with this, and
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: she found that there seems to have been an increase
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: in pseudocides or people getting caught trying their hand at pseudicide,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: after the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, speaking of tronchias.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: So another big one too is if you are about
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: to be incarcerated for a very long time and I
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: happen to have let you out on bail, there's a
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: higher likelihood that you're going to try this than, say,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: you know, when you're gainfully employed and you're sitting around
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: reading the newspaper fairly content.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, very sadly. Of course, one of the
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: reasons is, like the sleeping with the enemy method, which
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: is you're trying to escape some sort of abusive situation
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: in your home, whether it's a spouse or a family
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: member or something like that.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Right, or you want to frame your wife like in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the movie Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, we're is this two thousand and seven?
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: You know what? This really feels like earlier stuff you
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: should know type episode. So let's do it. Let's do it.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Try unches everywhere Ashley Judd appearances. I will figure it
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: out as we go along.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, our boss is just coming to us and
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: saying that, like, there's people that want to put commercials
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: on our podcasts, and we're saying, no, why would we
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: ever do that?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And then the other people are saying, what's a
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: podcast exactly? So let's see what else. Oh, I think
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: this one's probably it's pretty niche. But if you're a
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: lottery winner and you have a bunch of family you
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: don't care about sure that are coming out of the woodwork,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: you might try this as well.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. And here's the thing. If you have
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that kind of dough, I mean, making yourself disappear and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: faking your own death is not cheap, as we'll see,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So it is definitely more common for people of great
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: means to try this kind of thing. First of all,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: they may have the money to pull it off, because
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it can be expensive to like really do it right
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: these days. Or if you're the kind of person who
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you know, defrauded someone or a company of millions and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars, you know, that puts you in a
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: certain league. I've never had that opportunity to do.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Something like that, for instance, precisely. So, yeah, it's just
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: kind of a selection bias almost, you know, yeah, totally.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Men also are more likely to try this or at
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: the very least or are more likely to get caught. Yeah,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: and I could see that being the case. Right, We're
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: in just being yeah, more likely to do it. And
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: also again probably because the selection bias a little bit,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: finance bros are likelier than others to try this or
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: at least to get caught too.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense with just the risky sort of
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe they got into that hot water because
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: you know, this deal that just couldn't be resisted or whatever,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: because it's so much money.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Bro Right, it just didn't work out, bro.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Here's another interesting thing, is it is more common for
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: people to come to the United States to like collect
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: on an insurance policy, like if you're from another country,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: and then just go back to your home country.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, and you just mentioned insurance for the second or
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: third time. The people who work for insurance companies are
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: well aware of all of these things that we're rattling
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: off and more. Oh yeah, because as we'll see later on,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of stuff that you could do wrong
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: that insurance investigator is going to pick up on. We'll
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: talk more about that, but that's a big part of
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: this whole thing. It's a big reason people do this
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: insurance fraud, and it's a big reason people get caught
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: insurance investigators.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And as we'll see, it's way more
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: common for like the insurance company to hire somebody to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: find you rather than the cops to come after you,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: because the cops are like, well, you know, surely no
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: skin off my back, that's right, and the insurance company
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: is like, well, they just got millions of dollars from us,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: so we're gonna We're going to do your job exactly.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: We should probably give a pretty big shout out at
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: the outset here to Elizabeth Greenwood. She's the author. I
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: think her day job as a creative writing professor at Columbia.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: But she wrote a book which, as far as I
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: can tell, is the most exhaustive look at pseudoside anyone's
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: ever created. Her book was released in twenty sixteen. It's
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Playing Dead, a Journey through the world of death fraud.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And I guess she had a conversation with a friend
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: about how she could get out of her student debt,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: and somebody said, you should fake your own death. She said,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: you know, that's a great idea for a book. And
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: here we are, ipso facto talking about it now.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And she actually went through part of the process,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: just to actually go through it, to see how hard
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: or easy or expensive it was to write about it.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: She didn't go through with it, but she went as
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: far as finding out where this is. You know, when
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: you talk about something sort of unusual like this, seems
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: like there's always like, oh, well, you need to go
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: to this place because they just got the market cornered
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: on that, whether it's like you know, Swiss bank accounts
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: or offshore accounts, you know, like they have it set
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: up so you can do this kind of stuff, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: apparently that place for pseudo side is the Philippines.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who knew for sure. That's another thing too, If
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: you died in the Philippines, your insurance claim is going
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: to get investigated pretty thoroughly just because of that. Yeah.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: So Elizabeth Greenwood is not the first person to try this,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: but just based on her experience, she found that you
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: can pretty easily find people who are more than happy
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: to assist you with this for a fee, and a
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: relatively cheap fee, especially considering the type of documentation you get.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: I think for a couple hundred dollars, you can get
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: an official death certificate from the Filipino government. And that's
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: a big part of why the Philippines is so like
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: the center of all of this, because you're not getting
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: forged documents, you're getting false official documents. Yeah, because you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: somebody's got a friend on the inside and they're taking
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: bribes and like, so you're getting good actual documentation. It's
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: just all based on falsehoods. But that's not it. It
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: doesn't end there, Like, just hold your credit card for
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: another second, because they're gonna double this offer.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of like any service. They're like, well,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: if you just want the birth certificate, you can get
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: that for a couple of hundred bucks. But that's probably
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: not going to be enough these days. Back in the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: old days, that was probably all you needed it. You
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: should be way easier to get away with this kind
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: of thing.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the driver's licenses didn't even have pictures of them exactly.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: It's nuts.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: But if you really want to, you know, go through
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: with like the second tier service, you can get like
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: a kit that may have a new identity for you,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: kuind of have like a new passport in there, new per
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: certificate maybe something like that. Or if you really want
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: to go with a like the deluxe package, you can
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: spend and you know, tens of thousands of dollars to
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: get somebody like almost like concier service for someone who's like,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I can erase your tracks, I can make it like
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you were never here. I can make sure you don't
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: get caught. I can get people too. We can cook
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: up a story and I can get witnesses to testify
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that they saw this car wreck and pulled your body
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: out of the wreckage. And you know, we know people
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that work in morgues and hospitals, and if you want
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: to pay the money, we can really really do this thing, right.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we can get you an actual dead body.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: If you want a dead body, I can get your
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: dead body by three pm.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's gonna probably that's gonna sit in for you.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Apparently this really kind of drives it home. If there's
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: a kidaver and you're not just missing presumed dead, that's
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: definitely going to help your your pseudo side become successful.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Like you said, there's black market morgues that essentially, if
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: you're unidentified or unclaimed in the Philippines, there's a chance
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: somebody's going to hang on to your body and you
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: might be sold to fulfill someone's pseudo side attempt. And
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: it's not just the Philippines either. I saw at least
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: one story here in Georgia, I think Coffee County, God
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: knows where that is. Where this I guess an undertaker
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: at a funeral home had a ton of bodies that
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: he supposedly buried that he was selling for this reason
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: or for other reasons. But also this was one of
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: the things you could buy a body for. And even
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: like a legitimate funeral home has an incentive to just
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: kind of be like, uh, yeah, it's nice to meet you, cousin.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Ed.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Just give me the money and you can take this body.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Right, Okay, now I know where we did this. We
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: did a video about this. Oh yeah, yep, I knew
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: we had done something, but I looked up the podcast
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: and we hadn't. We did something. We did some kind
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: of video on this because it may have just been
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: centered around the Coffee County thing, because as soon as
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: you said Coffee County, I was like, wait, there was
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: a guy there that did this. So yeah, it is
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: two thousand and eight.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It is all over again. We need to make this
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: episode twelve minutes long.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh great. Here's my question though. The idea is
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: that you get this body and have it cremated and
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: you pass off those human remains or cremains, But how
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: does that work with DNA? Like, why don't you if
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that's the case, why can't you just get cremanes.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: I think cremation destroys DNA pretty good.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So why don't they just say, like, here's a bag
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of teeth and ashes.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Some people do, Okay, I don't. Yeah, I think so,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Greenwood, those Filipino guys, I guess they're trying to
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: upsell her, but she said that some like they offer
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: not just a corpse but a fake funeral. They'll stage
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: a funeral, a real funeral, but there's like the mourners
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: there are paid. There's photographs of you know, people at
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: your funeral that if the insurance company asks for something
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: like that to document it, you've got it. But she's like,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: this is all very unnecessary, just like what you said.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: You you just have the cremains, and it's like, well,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: you know, what are you going to do? This is
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: supposedly the dead person. That makes way more sense. It's
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: way cheaper, it's way less of a hassle. And like
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: I was saying, some legitimate funeral homes, like if you're
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: if the laws in your country say, one of the
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: roles you play is like taking over custody of like
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: unidentified people, like say a homeless person who dies, you're
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: responsible for giving them a respectful burial. You go to
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: one of these places and say, oh, yeah, that's my
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: that's my cousin, and they're they're going to be like here,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: give me some money, and you know you can handle
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: everything from there.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and again, if I mean if you're trying to
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: commit insurance for all it or something that's going to
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: ramp up investigatory practice, most certainly from the insurance company,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: maybe the cops, depending on kind of what's going on.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And obviously if you're escaping justice stuff like that. But
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: if that's not what you're doing, if you're just trying
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: to get out of your life for some like sad reason,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: maybe and especially if you go to another country and
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: do this, law enforcement in America is probably not going
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: to do anything.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: No, they're gonna say god speed because it's not.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: A crime specifically, and maybe we should take a break,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and sounds like a good place to leave it a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I agree, all right, we'll be right back after this
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: with more on sudicide.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: Stuff you should know, gosh Man show stuff you should know.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: All right, So before we broke, I mentioned before that
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: it used to be way easier to get away with
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: this kind of thing. I think this probably happened a
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: lot more back in the day. As with all crime,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it's just gotten more difficult to get away with that stuff.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Besides DNA facial recogn technology and video cameras on everyone's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: front doorstep and the surveillance cameras that cities have employed
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: all over you know, major cities all over the world.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: It's just really hard to not get caught on one
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of these eventually, and someone say, hey, the guy going
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: into that Italian restaurant there is totally my dad. I
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: would recognize them anywhere.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Right right. I thought those doorstep cameras were to create
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: a sense of community, like you would find out what
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: a great person your ups driver. Isn't that what they're for?
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I think so? Because they pet your kiddy.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Right, It just tangentially helps to track people who fake
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: their own death.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or too uh in my case to post on
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the internet when when squirrels attack is what I call
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: my show.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It's a great show.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Emily sent me one yesterday. She was like, hey, take
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: a look at the doorbell came at twelve eleven and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: she tripped going up the stairs in a very very
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: funny way, and so she made sure I saw that.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: Are you gonna post it?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: No?
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, you should post it to Yakity Sachs.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: I might do that actually one of the So, yeah,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of ways that you can get caught
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: these days, in ways you might not have thought of.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Here's a word to the wise. If you're going to
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: try to stage your death, and everybody who has anything
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: to do with the research of this article says, don't bother.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: You're going to screw it up. Probably you had better
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: researched every single aspect you can possibly think of and
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: started a long time before. It would really help if
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: you had thought about this ten years ago. Yeah, the
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: best time to start planning your pseudo side is ten
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: years ago. The second best time is today. But it's
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: not really a good time. Second best. That's the old saying.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: But if you started thinking about it ten years ago,
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: you could have really actually given this identity your new
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: false identity legs by like getting credit cards in its name,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: building a credit history. Like it would be way easier
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: to step into that life than say, like, you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: for figuring out what tour is and then buying like
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: a false identity the same day. You want to plan
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: it better than that.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like in movies a lot of times,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that's the giveaway is they'll they'll be like, well, you
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: don't have any credit history, and I really can't find
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: anything about you. But if you've got a you know,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: a list of cable bills and a credit history and
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: stuff that goes back, you know, ten years. It's like
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: just having your ID isn't enough if you have a
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: history already built up. I mean, this guy was an
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: artist in twenty thirteen named Curtis Wallin who did it
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: a sort of performance art, like as a project, and
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: he created an alter ego, and he got a driver's license,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: He got an ID certifying him as a member of
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: a indigenous Native American tribe. He got a boat operator's license.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Like that, that's kind of a deep cut, I think, yeah.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: I think so too. I think, you know, that's the
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: kind of thing where you like, would a fake person
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: have a boat operator's license.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: For a decade exactly? He got insurance, Like if you
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: have all this stuff, then all of a sudden, you're
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: just not as suspicious. I think no.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: He went even further, too, Like he disguised his his look.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: I guess yeah, by I guess so yeah, for like
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: your ID, because it would be very easy for somebody
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: to scan a database of driver's licenses looking for somebody's face.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: That's easy pasy these days. But what he did was
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: he took his driver's license photo and then merged it
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: with a couple other people's features to create an entirely
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: synthetic new person. That's what he used for his photo.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I guess it was close enough that if you showed
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: it to somebody that wouldn't be like, what is this
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: weird thing? He looks like a Picasso, but like it
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: would still fool facial recognition.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and of course, like you said, he's photoshopped.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: These days, it could be very easily done with AI
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: much quicker.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Sure, I'm old school, though, remember this is twenty ten.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. This new photoshop thing is amazing, isn't it.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: It is? And I don't know what the heck you
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: mean by AI.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Someone's going to write and be like photoshopple is created
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: It probably was, actually, yeah, probably somewhere in the nineties.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: He also the way he started all this was created
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: an email address. You know, it seems pretty logical. He's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the private tour browser and he got in touch with
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: someone on Craigslist anonymously and said, I want to buy
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: this computer. I want to pay cash. Cash, as you'll see,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: is a big part of all this. Yes, anytime you
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: want to do this, have a lot of cash. On hand,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: we're not instructing you on how to do this.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: No, it's kind of coming out that way though, huh
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And again, if you're doing something like this, you're either
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: a bad person who's done something we were wrong, or
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you've had something done very wrong to you, which is
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: very sad. So again we're not making light of it.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: But he bought that computer with cash. He sort of
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: disguised himself when he met up, and then he used
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: more cash to buy a bitcoin at a computer shop
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: like a brick and mortar store. So bitcoin is obviously,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: you know, converting if you have holdings or whatever you
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: want to convert to bitcoin, that's a or cash. It's
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: a better way to do it than obviously having that
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: in your name, but that's very hard to do these days.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Like everything can be tracked and traced so much easier now.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, including bitcoin. Although the bitcoin transactions themselves are anonymous,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: that or who's buying what is anonymous, the actual transition
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: transaction is public and it's publicly listed in the bitcoin blockchain.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: And you if your real name is associated somewhere down
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: the line with say your bitcoin wallet, and the feds
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: track a bitcoin to go to your wallet. They know
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: that you have just bought a bitcoin, and so they
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: can follow you and see what you do with that bitcoin.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: So it's really really hard, even with cryptocurrency to remain anonymous,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: which is another reason that you would want to do
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: this years ahead of time. You mentioned buying everything with cash.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: You don't want to on the day before you disappear
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: and like allegedly die. You don't want to clean out
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: your bank accounts. That's a big, big red flag. That
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: is bush league, right, Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Twenties and hundreds will be fine. Just put it in
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: this garbage sack.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, don't look at me.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, you want to have been socking away cash,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: maybe burying it in mason jars in your yard, who knows,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: while you also have your regular, legitimate bank accounts that
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: you do not touch when you leave. Because dead people
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: don't withdraw a bunch of money but from their accounts
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: the day before they die. It's just a bad look.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: So it's another reason to start planning this long ahead
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: of time if you have any any opportunity to.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, like you know, we've listed a
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: bunch of ways you can get caught. It turns out
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: that the way most people get caught when they attempt
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: a pseudo side is getting in touch with someone from
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: their previous life. Yeah, if this is the kind of
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: thing you want to do, you have to. And this
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: is how it plays out in the movies too. I
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: feel like you got to really really commit to this
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and decide, like i Am never gonna see my kids again,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: or I'm never gonna call my mom on her birthday
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: or anything. You have to completely disappear from that life
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: because especially once again, I hate to say it again,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: these days, it's very easy to track email and phone
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: calls and everything else, and it's gonna be very easy
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: if you put in that birthday call the mom just
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: one last time, a year after you're dead.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Yep, they'll be like, your your toast man, we caught you.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah there was another one. Did you mention the pet chip?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: No, but yeah, that's one you probably might not be
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: thinking of.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could easily overlook something like that. Let's say
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: you take your dog or your cat with you, right,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: you took them out on the boat and the boat capsize,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: So sure they're dead too if they're micro chipped. You
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: might have forgotten that you ever had a microchip. Your
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: pet can pretty easily be tracked, and if they track
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: down your pet, they're going to track you down too.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: So good point.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, I think if we're if we're if we're getting
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: across that this is really hard to do successfully, I
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: feel like then you know we're really achieving our goal.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but again I'm not I'm not gonna feel too
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: bad about giving semi instruction here because believe it or not,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: it's not a crime. Usually stuff you do to get
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: away with this as a crime, it could be. And
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: just put like insurance fraud aside that maybe the reason
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: you're doing it, but the actual doing it, the act
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: of doing it, you're probably gonna be breaking some laws,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: even if it's just like fake dental records or any
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: kind of untrue. Even writing a fake suicide letter could
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: be considered forgery or fraud, I guess. And then if
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: you take on a new identity, that's identity fraud, right,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: even if you're not like, it's not identity theft, that
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: which is different, even if you're not stealing someone else's identity,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: like done, Well, I'm not gonna spoil something from a
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: TV show, oh, because it's two thousand and eight almost
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: blurted it out, but I don't want to do that.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: But Don Johnson from Miami Vice.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, let's just say that all A said is
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: done like stealing someone's identity, like let's say like you
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: were in the army with or let's go ahead and
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: ruin the Simpsons principal Skinner did.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: That, right, Yeah, Harmon Tansarian. Yeah, you know what.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: My favorite my favorite line from that.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: I was about to say to you, go ahead there,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: what if.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: It's the same line, wouldn't that be it is? Do
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: you think it is ahead with the superintendent or whatever?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Uh huh, he says, I'd like to introduce our but
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: our new principal Seymore Skinner. Principal Seymore Skinner something like that.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very fun. That was a weird episode.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So you said that if you steal someone's identity, like
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: that's obviously a crime. For sure. If you make up
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: a completely false identity like you didn't steal it from anybody,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: it's just completely made up, you're still eventually going to
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: make a crime.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's that's what I said. That's identity fraud.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, So even if you even so you said that
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: even if it's just totally made up, it's still identity fraud.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I did, sir, okay, good, because yes, eventually you're going
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: to have to legalize it and want to do that.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: You're in trouble. There's a lot of laws you're suddenly breaking.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: The thing is, though, is there is something you said
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: earlier about the cops is kind of being like they
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: can't really be bothered depending on how well you execute
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: this and where you go, Like say you move to
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: another country, it's gonna be tough for the cops to
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: track you, even if they really want to. Everyone who's
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: ever seen a movie like Beverly Hills copp or whatever
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: knows that the captain is going to be on that
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: detective's butt to clear that case and go ahead and
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: move on to the other ones because they have a backlog.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: So they're not going to track you to New Zealand.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: They're just gonna have to like move on, get another
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: take on another case. It's maybe a little closer that
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: doesn't involve New Zealand. But again, if it has anything
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: to do with insurance fraud, there's probably going to be
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: an insurance investigator who will show up in New Zealand
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: disguised as a sheep and then pounce the moment that
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: you walk past.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or if it's not in certainly, if you have
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: defrauded a corporation or a bank or something like that
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: for like tens of millions or maybe even hundreds of
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: millions of dollars, right, they'll they'll hire some pis to
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: get on that case. Pretty toot sweet for sure.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: And since this is two thousand and eight, twenty ten,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: I got to give the obligatory shout out to magnum
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: p I.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right, because that's when he was most popular.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Well, that's when I loved him the most.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: No, uh is your love Wane?
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: I think I just started taking him for granted, same
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: old story.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand happenstallars in a long relationship.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: You want to take another break.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break and we'll maybe we'll dive
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: into that what an insurance company might do to find you?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: How about that?
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Oh? Good idea stuff you should know, Josh, and shock
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: stuff you should know. Okay, so we're back, and you
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: said you promised everybody without consulting me first, that we
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: would start talking about what life insurance companies will do
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: to find you.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, I guess we could start talking a little bit
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: about what might like what might trigger this as far
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: as an insurance company saying like, all right, we definitely
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: need to use our own resources here, aside from cops
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: saying that they're not going to help out much. And
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that is the first trigger is if your policy has
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: a payout over a million bucks, they'll be like, all right,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: that that's worth our time and money.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's apparently they think of basically any payout under
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: a million dollars of small potatoes.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so so mister Clark, No, his was just
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: nine hundred ninety nine, nine hundred ninety nine dollars a
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: ninety nine cents. Just exactly brush that one aside.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Forget about it. Yeah. Basically, anytime your death is sudden, unexpected,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: or suspicious in any way, they're going to they're going
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: to investigate, not necessarily because they think you've committed death fraud,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: but because they need to investigate anyway to rule out
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: something like suicide, because there might be an exception for
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: suicide on your policy. Yeah, that's a big one. They
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: also look for inconsistencies, if there's any kind of inconsistency
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: on say like your driver's license or your death certificate
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: or something like that, that's going to catch their attention too.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: This is all just preliminary stuff they're looking at before
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: they really decide to get involved in an investigation.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Even. Yeah, you mentioned the Philippines as being like the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: biggest red flag, but really any claim involving a death
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: in a foreign country is going to get investigated. Just
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: to sort of dot the eyes and cross the t's,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: maybe they might be a little suspicious, but it definitely
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: will get investigated. And also, if you're like everything just
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: send everything to my PO box, that's that's a pretty
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: big red flag.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or even like a friend's address would be a
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: red flag as well. What else, if you're super thirsty
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: for a life insurance policy and they find out that
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: you've applied with a bunch of different carriers all at
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: the same time, that's going to raise red flags, especially
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: if the payout is substantially disproportionate to your net worth.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So you're worth three hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand dollars,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: but the payout is like ten million dollars. That's just
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: by virtue of that being very tantalizing. It's going to
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: be it's going to be a red flag.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a pretty good one that I didn't think about.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: If they'll look up their insurance client or whatever and
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: they'll be like, this is weird. Josh Clark went and
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: picked up a year's worth of his heart medication all
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: at once, and then right after that went to visit
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: one of his relative that he hasn't visited in a decade.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So this sounds a little shady to me.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to take that medicine because my heart's
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: so big and tender.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Right, I know that you just have to. It would
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: burst out of your chest otherwise.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: And then also there's some missteps that people who try
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: this often make. One is staying in the same city.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: That's fine, bogglingly dumb if you're trying to fake your
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: own death.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if I were to do this, I guarantee no
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: one would find me.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: No, because you wouldn't do it like you're lazy.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I could disappear into another country quite well, I think.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean you're pretty famous. Come on, not
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: that famous, you're famous enough that somebody would knarck on you.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: So if I just went well, I'm not going to
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: say the country, just in case I want to keep
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: you in this pocket.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I was thinking that too, man, after all the research
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I've been doing, that is surely just hanging around in
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: my browser history. If I ever tried to fake my death,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: it would be pretty obvious that I tried it, just
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: from all the research for this one.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, you also don't want to, Like, there's
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: lots of e mistakes you can make, like electronic mistakes,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: whether it's cell phone stuff or googling yourself from an
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Internet cafe in the Philippines or you know, stuff like
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: that that could get you pinched.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then also if your new identity is pretty
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: close to your old identity, that might be you might
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: want to go slightly further to the left or the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: right for your new identity, not even politically, I just mean,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: like veer, oh.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. If you adopt a complete
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: if you're known for being like whatever, like a maga Republican,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and you adopt the new identity as this progressive liberal,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: pretty smart move. Probably.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There's this guy named Josh Clark who is a
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Republican that who I think is in the Georgia House.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: I could just take over his life, yeah and still
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: be Josh Clark, but a totally different Josh Clark. Yeah,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: what else, Chuck anything, I mean, those are all the
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: things that would trigger like an insurance investigation pretty much.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes. So, like we said, Chuck, this is like
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: this happens. People do this, and when they get caught,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: it makes the news. So there's pretty good documentation of
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: people all over the world trying this. One that comes
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: up quite a bit as a German student who in
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four was twenty four years old. Her name
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: was Petra Pezzika. Yeah, and she went missing from Brownschwig
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Brown Schweig, Germany. I'm not doing very well with this.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: No, that's perfect.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Brown Schweig makes me hungry for some sort of sausage.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it totally sounds sausage. Yeah. So she was reported
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: missing right in nineteen eighty four. She's twenty four at
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: the time, I think you said. And at a certain
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: point police got a guy that confessed to her murder.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: So that was like a case closed kind of situation,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: even though the body wasn't found and the guy later
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: said I actually did not kill her. He recanted his confession.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: So she was declared dead dead dead about five years
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: later in eighty nine, and lived quite a while with
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: a sort of hidden identity.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she finally got caught. She had turned. It turns
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: out she had been living by working, being paid under
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the table. She seems to have had like no credit
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: or any any need for anything like that. She was
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: just living a very modest, quiet life, paying for everything
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: with cash. So she got away with this for more
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: than twenty five years, and she was burgled. At some
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: point she called the cops, and I guess, just as routine,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: they asked to see her ID and she hadn't bothered
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: to get any other kind of So she's like, you
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: caught me. I'm Petra Pazika, And they said, we've been
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: looking for you forever. And apparently they did not press
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: any charges because they couldn't find any crime that she'd
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: actually broken. She didn't defraud anybody, she hadn't gotten any
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: false documents. She just left her life essentially. No one
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: knows why. That's the weird thing.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they said guten tog and they left. I guess.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But even after her being found out and being
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: in like the story being huge international news. She just
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: wouldn't say why she did that. She just said, I
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: don't want to contact my family. Yeah.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: And there are other cases too where police have, like
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: in the interview or whatever, found out why and don't
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: release that to the public, like it's probably some sort
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: of really sad, tragic situation. And I've seen police statements
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: where they're like, you know, we had an interview and
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: we understand why this happened, but there were no crimes committed,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and why it happened is NONEYA.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is not actually that case I
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: saw somewhere if I'm not mistaken that her family was
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: baffled by why she left and why she didn't want
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: to see them.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, this was I wasn't talking about this one.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Oh okay yeah yeah, yeah for sure. And hats off
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: to any cop that protects somebody like that, you.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Know, totally. I'll mention this one. This guy Sam Israel
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: the third, he was a hedge fund manager and he
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: was you know, this is one of those deals where
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: he stole three hundred million dollars, was sentenced to prison
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of decades in prison, So it was one
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: of those back up against the wall. I'm going to jail,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm in debt up to my eyeballs now, or
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I guess that even wouldn't count as debt anymore when
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you're going to prison. That's just you know, you were
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: found out, sure, And in June two thousand and eight,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: he wrote a message suicide is painless, and the pollen
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: on his suv can She kind of traced it out
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and jumped from a bridge and New York State very
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: conveniently landing on that construction net below that is so scary,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: pretty scary, but I guess you know it. You know
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that's there to catch people. I guess sure. So he
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: went to that very specific bridge for that reason, and
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: security cameras caught him literally getting up in another car
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: in an SUV that pulled up and like, you know,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the sound was off, but I'm sure they heard like wooo,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: we did it, and like they honked their horn, and
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: they got in touch with his girlfriend, arrested her as
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: a possible accomplice. He was on the most wanted list
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: because it was, you know, pretty clear what had happened
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: to that point, and he got found out because he
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: called his mom.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Who said, you need to turn yourself in. This is
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: a terrible idea and you were a terrible, terrible pseudocyitist.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you did not do that, and it seemed you know,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: here's some other advice is if you do this, like,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: don't go off to dinner to celebrate the next night,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: because a few people get caught at at dinner it
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: seems like.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that actually that does happen to a surprising degree.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: My favorite is John Stonehouse, who was a huge This
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: was a big deal in the UK in the mid
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: seventies because he was a member of parliament and in
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four he went missing off the coast of
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Miami when he went for a swim. Oh that was
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: one other thing. If you are if you disappear in
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: the water, you're automatically going to get investigated by an
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: insurance company because it is just so, yes, it is so.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: He went. This is before that, though he made it
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: to Australia, he ran off with his secretary and as
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: he while he was dead in parliament, people started raising
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: allegations against him. One was that he had enemies in
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: the mafia. Another was that he was a spy for Czechoslovakia.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: That turned out to be true weirdly, and then finally
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: a woman came forward and later on and said, this
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: guy came to my house was he said he was
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: a census taker, a survey taker, and he started asking
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: really weird questions about my husband, like did he ever
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: have a passport? So eventually he was found I think
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: in Australia and a months later, Yeah, he just had
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: he had to come forward and basically tell everybody what
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: had happened, right.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And well, I guess it's not funny, but the movie,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the I guess the novel I don't think
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: the movie had come out yet. Day of the Jackal
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: by Frederick Forsyth had been published a few years before,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and it appears that he literally kind of followed the
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: steps of how to obtain a False identity from that book,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: kind of note by note.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why he was asking about the passport. He
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: took a constituent's name who had never had a passport
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: and then got a passport in his name.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I'll pick one more for me. In
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, that was he was a guy
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: in his mid thirties from Indianapolis, a money manager manager
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: named Marcus Shrinker. He staged a plane crash. He was
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: trying to get out of lawsuits and divorce proceedings, and
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: he got a bunch of cash, put it in his
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: motorcycle saddle bags, went to Alabama, put it in a
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: storage facility, so he had the cash kind of worked out.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Then he took his very small, little single prop airplane
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: from his house in Indiana and was flying above Alabama
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: radios to air traffic control that you know, he's going down,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: something's wrong. He does a dB Cooper, he parachutes out.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: The plane crashes in Florida, and the next day he
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: emails his friend and tells him what he did.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Brah Man. That's yeah. We could keep going on. There's
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of these, but those are I think those
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: are some of the highlights, don't you.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We should probably close by talking about another kind
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of pseudo side, which is a faked online desk. It's
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: usually not like an insurance fraud or anything like that,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: but it's a symptom of what they used to call
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Munkow's and syndrome, and now they call it FD or
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: factitious disorder again. Previously Munkhow's and syndrome where you will
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: try and get you know, it's tied into mental illness,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: but it's a disorder where you're trying to get sympathy
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: by playing sick, or faking sick or actually having sometimes
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: real symptoms of something, but you're not sick, right, And
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: this is taking that one step further, which is to
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: get that sort of attention that you're craving or whatever
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: you're after through actually faking an online death. And it's
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: happened in some pretty high profile cases.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it has. And to be clear, this is way
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: different from somebody trying to defraud an insurance company or
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: escape from an abusive spouse. This is strictly because they
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: want attention, they want sympathy, and or they want to
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: control other people and manipulate them. It's way different. There's a,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: like you said, a very high profile one that happened
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: in at the dawn of the Internet. People have been
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: doing this essentially since there was an internet. A woman,
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: a teenager, a basketball star named Casey Nicole.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Remember this.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: She was a I guess kind of like a little
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: star of chat forums and that kind of thing, had
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: a big kind of support group online, and she had leukemia.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: So she posted about her her disease and decline from
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: it that was started in nineteen ninety nine and in
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one. In May of two thousand and one,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: there was a notice that appeared on her blog that
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: said that she had passed away and people were just
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: stricken by this.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do remember this happening. It was pretty big
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: in the news at the time because again it Donnie Internet,
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: so people are like, what is the Internet being used
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: for already? So some of her followers had previously, you know,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: saw some sort of hinky things going on in her stories.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Some of the medical stuff wasn't really making much sense
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: as far as like how leukemia progresses. And then apparently
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: she would quote a bunch of song lyrics that were
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: not from her generation, which isn't the biggest giveaway, you know,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: you can listen to music from any generation, but it
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: just just shady enough, combined with the other stuff that
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: were like, why is this teenager quoting you know, songs
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: from the sixties all of us, you know, all over the.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Place, right. I didn't look deeply enough into it to
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: find out how she was finally outed, but a forty
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: year old woman named Debbie Swinson admitted that she was
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: behind the whole thing that Casey Nicole had never existed.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: She stole the photo of a local girl basketball stars
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: picture her photo and used that as Casey, And I
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: mean that was that. Like, I guess the police department
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: told the FBI about it, and the FBI is like, no,
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: we're not going to investigate this. She didn't actually defraud
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: anybody or make any money off of it. She just
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: probably needs a little bit of help. Yeah, so that's
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: bad enough. Saying that, creating a fictitious teenager who's dying
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: of leukemia pretty bad. Telling people that you, the real you,
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: has died by suicide. There was an article in Gizmoto
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: that interviewed a professor of psychiatry named Mark Feldman, and
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: he puts it pretty clearly. He says, because of the
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: social stigma involved and the emotional weight associated with suicide,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: it's particularly powerful, and that if you use that to
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: manipulate people, you're at the you're at the peak of manipulativeness.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what an author named Susan meetcher Mitchen
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: did in twenty twenty.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: I think, right, yeah, I totally remember this one. This
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: is a very big deal. She was a self published
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: romance author and she had a you know, a decent
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: following on Facebook. And in twenty twenty and the voice
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: of her daughter posted that her mom had died by
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: suicide after being bullied in the book world. Yeah, and
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: it was a very big deal. It was a very
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: shocking revelation that, you know, this woman had been bullied
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: to death basically, and the writing community was all up
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: in arms about it, and like, you know, like, see,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: this is what can happen with online bullying. Which what
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: really stinks is that is absolutely what can happen with
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: online bullying. But this woman was lying. Her daughter continued
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: to post on or you know, in scare quotes. Her
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: daughter continued to post to the account, and they someone
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: pointed out that they recognized a little quirk in her
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: writing was that Michen would say instead of supposed to
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: she would type post to post two like I'm post
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: to do this and that little jot from family circus exactly,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and that little quirk writing as her daughter gave it away.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so she she was outed. I think she carried
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: this on for two years and then she suddenly showed
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: back up in her community, her writing community forum and said, hey,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I'm alive. This is all just a fake. She said,
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: there's gonna be tons of questions. Let the fun begin.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine a more arrogant way to reannounce that
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: you didn't actually die. So people, of course were appalled
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: and angry, and like she she was, I think I
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: think she expected people to be like, oh my god,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: thank god you're alive. That was amazing. It did not
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: go like that at all. She became reviled and hated,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: and I think rightfully so that's a really horrible thing
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: to do to people. And also, on top of it,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: to exploit online bullying. Yeah, totally, you know, just for
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: your own ego. It's just that's terrible stuff.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: There's one more. I want to just really quickly point out.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: This has happened more than once. People have faked their
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: death online to get out of some obligation. I read
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: about somebody kind of this was so one Knitting Forum
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: participant died rather than say, like, I'm not able to
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: come up with the patterns that I said I could.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: That was one.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Another one was a Percy Jackson fan fiction site that
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: somebody staged their death online because they couldn't deliver some
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: fan fiction that they said they would. Yeah, weird stuff.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: At least that's less manipulative. It's just being afraid of confrontation.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: I guess that's right.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: Since Chuck just said that's right, I think it's time
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: for listener mail.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: This is about libraries a little bit more. Hey, guys.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: As you mentioned in the recent short stuff on alt libraries,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I wanted to mention this. In nineteen oh one, Andrew
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Carnegie funded the construction of dozens of libraries and all
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: five boroughs of New York City, and most of these
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: buildings came with a family apartment which housed the custodian
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: who kept the coal fire burning the furnace. As the
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: furnaces were replaced in the custodians retired, the apartment sat empty.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Some of the apartments are still intact, while some have
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: been converted into storage, mechanical rooms, or as is the
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: case in the library where I work at teen Center.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I thought you might be interested in this little slice
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of New York City and library history. There are about
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: thirty Carnegie branches left in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and the city is slowly working their way through renovations
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: to modernize each location. Next time you're in New York,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: come check us out wrap spanked delivered. I'm yours. That
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: is Madeleine Lovegrove, the children's librarian at the one hundred
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: and twenty fifth Street New York Public Library.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, thanks a lot, Madeline. That I had never
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: heard of that, and I would really love to see
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: some of those abandoned apartment that we're just left as is.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: She sent a link and it had pictures.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: My friend, Oh, I can't wait to see that. Thank
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: you for telling me that. Check and thank you again
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: to Madeline. If you want to be like Madeline and
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: send us an email the exact proper way you can
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: do that, send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.