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While faking your death—also known as pseudocide—is not explicitly unlawful, pulling it off typically involves breaking multiple laws.
“Pseudocide isn't inherently a crime … but it involves so many built-in frauds that it's virtually impossible to legally fake your drowning. Frankly, you'll only be drowning in fraud,” James Quiggle, the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud’s director of communications, shared with Live Science in 2012.
Why go through the effort of faking your own death? Some individuals may resort to pseudocide in order to collect life insurance payouts, avoid existing arrest warrants, escape paying off debts such as school loans, car payments, or mortgages, or simply to reinvent themselves with a fresh identity, leaving behind personal troubles like strained relationships or work-related stress.
While there are no federal or state laws that explicitly outlaw pseudocide, individuals who stage their own death may still commit other crimes, such as conspiracy, fraudulently claiming life insurance benefits, evading taxes, having a spouse file a fake police report, forging a death certificate, or failing to make timely loan payments.
Although it's technically possible to pull off pseudocide without breaking the law, one would not be able to legally acquire a new identity in the U.S. Institutions like the Social Security Administration, the DMV, and financial entities such as banks and mortgage companies require valid proof of identity. Using a fabricated identity is considered fraud.
Author Elizabeth Greenwood delves into the world of pseudocide and the disappearance industry in her upcoming book Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud. Greenwood presents both perspectives, from consultants aiding individuals in “disappearing” to private investigators tracking down those suspected of faking their deaths for fraudulent claims. Death and taxes, it seems, share more than just inevitability—they also involve considerable sums of money.
