There are plenty of ways to handle collections. Faking death probably shouldn’t be one of them.

A Singaporean man with a failed car rental business faked his own death twenty years ago and collected hundreds of thousands in insurance money.

Gandaruban Subramaniam was tired of being hounded by debt collectors and loan sharks, so he skipped town nearly two decades ago and fled to London to work as a street sweeper. He ended up in Sri Lanka where he obtained a death certificate, allowing his wife to claim $243,600 in life insurance.

His supposed cause of death? One would think he’d just “allow” himself to die of natural causes, but Subramaniam wanted to be a hero. The certificate claims he was killed in a shootout between rebels and troops during the Sri Lankan civil war.

Satisfied his death would bury his debt, Subramaniam moved back to Singapore seven years later using a fake passport, remarried his “widowed” wife, and bore a fourth child.

It wasn’t until October 2007 that Subramaniam was raised from the dead – legally at least. A lawyer uncovered his fraudulent past and Subramaniam, his wife and brother were incarcerated.

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Tags: Buried debt, Civil War, Faking death, Life insurance