Woman fakes death several times to collect life insurance

Claiming she was “addicted to money,” a New Zealand woman faked her death three times in an attempt to collect nearly $3 million in insurance money, New Zealand’s news web site Stuff reported on Monday.

Mary-Rose Ponce Calderon was sentenced in the Auckland District Court in April to three years and two months in prison for the elaborate fraud. She collected $800,000 before she was caught, according to the news site. 

Her scheme began two years earlier in April 2015, when she took out an $800,000 life insurance policy online with the company Asteron Life, using her maiden name and listing a fake beneficiary with the same address and cellphone number as herself. 

One month later Ms. Calderon contacted the insurer as the fictitious beneficiary, claiming the insured had died after a hockey ball hit her on the head, the site reported. She then went about forging and altering the necessary documents to support the fabricated death.

The woman then continued the same scheme with two other insurers, with $1 million and $950,000 policies, varying beneficiaries and different causes of death. Fabricated documents on her second and third claims were flagged and investigated, leading to her arrest in 2016, the site reported.