10 Insane Reasons People Faked Their Own Death

7. So He Could Move To Panama

A good idea when you are gonna fake your death, and you actually want to get away with it, you should probably deactivate your Facebook account.

That's the mistake John Darwin made in what was otherwise a foolproof plan to cash in on his competitive life insurance policy before he actually, y'know, actually carked it. He did keep up the deception for a good five years, though, after running into hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of debt and pretending that he was lost at sea during a canoeing trip in his native Hartlepool.

A body was never found but a boat was, which apparently was enough for Darwin to be announced as legally dead. Even ballsier than that, the ex-teacher managed to live in a bedsit next to the family home for some time, unbeknownst to everyone.

Well, everyone bar wife Anne, who was in on the whole thing. He then moved back in properly and did a terrible job of avoiding detection until they could use their £25,000 insurance payout to move to Panama and started to step up a hotel.

That specialised in canoeing holidays. As if that wasn't conspicuous enough of a trail leading to their crime, the pair then appeared in a load of photos online. They were caught, deported and sentenced to six years imprisonment in 2008. Not before they both tried to pretend they had amnesia, mind.