A woman who reportedly died in a car crash in Western Australia last December had actually faked her own death to claim more than $700,000 in life insurance.
Karen Salkilld, 42, was caught by a 9News reporter casually going about his business in Perth (shopping, running his F45 studio and returning home) after committing insurance fraud.
Ambushed as she left the North Lake shopping center parking lot, Salkilld snapped when asked, “Why did you fake your own death?”
Pressing her hands to her chest, she replied: ‘What the hell! Who are you? I’m not talking to you guys.’
The journalist followed her as she prepared to cross the street and asked her: ‘How did you think you could get away with this? She is accused of serious crimes of fraud.
Salkilld’s elaborate fraud scheme involved posing as his partner to claim a massive life insurance payout after faking his own death.
Karen Salkilld (above), who reportedly died in a car crash in Broome, Western Australia, last December, had actually faked her own death to claim more than $700,000 in life insurance.
The F45 fitness instructor, 42, became angry when she was questioned over her elaborate fraud, which included posing as her own partner to claim a life insurance payout.
According to Nine, Salkilld started the fraud on February 7 by initiating a life insurance claim with a company posing as his partner.
The claim claimed Karen Salkilld had died in a car accident in Broome two months earlier.
Salkilld included a forged death certificate, a letter from the WA coroner’s court and a record of the inquest into the alleged death.
A week later, the insurance company paid $718,923 into a bank account opened by Salkilld in the name of his partner, who is not implicated in Salkilld’s fraud.
When journalist Michael Stamp asked Salkilld why she faked her own death, she responded: “Jesus Christ, go find someone else.”
Scammer Karen Salkilld is an assistant football coach for the East Fremantle Sharks club.
Salkilld is pictured left in Broome, which is where he claimed to have died in a car accident last December; and right at his F45 gym, where he casually went about his business this week after pleading guilty to a $700,000 fraud scheme.
Over the next few days, Salkilld made several payments from the account, but due to its nature, the bank flagged the payments and froze the account.
In an effort to unfreeze the account, Salkilld went to the Palmyra police station with identification documents, including a Medicare card and driver’s license, certified by a police officer.
These copies of the IDs were heavily altered before being sent to the bank, but did not pass the verification process, Nine reports.
Police arrested Salkilld in March. At his first court appearance, he pleaded guilty to offenses including obtaining benefits by fraud and attempting to defraud by knowingly using a false registration.
Salkilld is an assistant football coach for the East Fremantle Sharks club and operates the F45 gym in Applecross, Perth.
Her social media pages include photos of her with her two children in Broome.
He faces up to seven years in prison, due to be sentenced in the Western Australian District Court in July.
When 9News followed her to her home in Perth, she turned to the journalist and said: ‘Are you trying to make things worse, or are you trying to put the F45 under the banner again or what?’
After entering his property, he shouted through the fence: ‘Jesus Christ, go find someone else.’
