A businessman has been jailed for two-and-a-half years after he faked his own death from “brain fever,” going so far as to even claim to have been cremated in attempt to make a $1.9 million life insurance claim.
Sanjay Kumar claimed to have been taken ill while on a trip to India, even managing to convince his wife to take part in the crime, committed in 2011. When Kumar returned to the U.K., under a fake name in August 2012, according to the International Business Times, he thought insurers
Aviva and Scottish Provident would pay out his $1.9 million claim.
Insurers initially paid out $20,498 but – suspicious of Kumar – they did some digging and found that he had not been ill in India. In fact, he had obtained a fake death certificate for himself.
Scottish Provident handed the case over to the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Department, who discovered Kumar was in significant financial debt and under pressure to pay it off.
Judge David Higgins, sentencing Kumar in London’s Southwark Crown Court, branded the couple’s behaviour “routinely deplorable and deeply anti-social.”
