10 Insane Reasons People Faked Their Own Death

3. To End His Verizon Contract

With the labyrinthine maze of outsourced call centres and employees told to offer you any deal they can imagine in order to keep you from defecting to a competitor, cancelling any sort of contract these days is a phenomenal pain in the bum.

We tried to wriggle out of a LoveFilm subscription once and ended up having to justify our film-watching choices to a guy in India before he finally freed us of the terror of the stacked DVDs in envelopes.

Some people never get that far, however, talked out of it by overzealous salesmen or else put off by how difficult it is to cancel a contract period. For Chicago consultant Corey Taylor (no relation to the Slipknot frontman... or is he?? No, he is not) it was much worse than that.

After many sleepless nights and irritated days on the phone to mobile company Verizon where he simply wasn't being allowed to end his contract earlier than planned, he stumbled across a clause that said they would terminate any contract without penalty if the person named died. Which is when Chicago consultant Corey Taylor had a great idea.

Or an insane one, whatever.

Rather than pay the $175 Verizon wanted for him to escape his contract earlier, and unable to negotiate with them, Taylor decided to have a friend whip up a fake death certificate and then fax it over to the company to "prove" he had died. Okay, so Taylor wasn't seriously expecting to get out of paying the fine, more wanting to "send a message" to a cell phone provider whose coverage was crappy and constantly dropped calls.

It didn't work for long, anyway, with Verizon doubting the veracity of his death certificate and demanding he pay up.