Woman Kills Herself and Two Young Kids After Husband Fakes His Own Death for Insurance Scam, Doesn&#
One man’s bid to make $200,000 by faking his own death in a car accident has backfired in the most tragic way imaginable — after his wife took her own life and those of her children.
The 34-year-old Chinese citizen — who has only been identified in the nation’s state media by the surname He — said he came up with the idea of faking his own death after falling into debt to pay for medical care for his epileptic three-year-old daughter.
According to a report by state-run Voice of China radio, his wife, Dai, 31, would have been the listed beneficiary of his one million yuan ($200,000) life insurance.
He was found to have loans of more than 100,000 yuan ($20,000) — a cripplingly high level debt in China where the average salary for low-paid workers is just 45,403 yuan ($9,218) per year.
The desperate father decided to go ahead with the plan and borrowed his employer’s car to fake an accident which would convince everybody he was dead.
He never even told his wife about the plan.
So, when police officers discovered the car crumpled at the bottom of nearby a river on September 19, and couldn’t find his body, they told the family he was presumed dead.
Believing her husband was really dead, Dai took her own life and those of the couple’s four-year-old son and three-year-old daughter on October 11.
All three bodies were discovered near their family home in Loudi, in central Hunan province.
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In a chilling letter, which the distressed mother posted on social media before committing suicide, she described the devastating toll of her husband’s “death” on her and the children.
She wrote that her husband’s family had blamed her for his disappearance, saying she did not have a job and spent too much money.
Dai would have been the listed beneficiary of her husband’s one million yuan ($200,000) life insurance. Picture: Weibo
She explained that she did not work because she wanted to take care of the young children, and said her spending was reasonable.
“I want to use my life to prove myself,” she said in the note — according to The Straits Times.
She also revealed she and her husband had been happily married and that she missed him. She said she was committing suicide and taking the children with her so that the family could be together.
Mr He turned himself into police the day after his family died.
However, before he did, he posted a video online, which has now gone viral viewed almost 29 million times on microblogging site Weibo.
In the clip, he can be seen crying and saying he had borrowed money to pay for treatment for his three-year-old daughter, who suffered from epilepsy.
The tragedy has been widely talked about across Chinese social media over the past week, sparking conversations about financial pressures and familial issues.
However, according to analysis from BBC Monitoring’s Kerry Allen, users have been unsympathetic towards Mr He’s situation.
She said thousands on Weibo have been discussing the case, with many saying they find his apology “insincere”.
Zhang Xinnian, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the Global Times the link between Mr He’s alleged fraud and Dai’s suicide “will be difficult to prove in court”.
He added that although Mr He “will be condemned morally”, he was “unlikely to suffer criminal liability for the death of his family”.
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Culled from NT News