Mother and son held for ‘faking her death’ on luxury trip

A MOTHER and son have been arrested for allegedly faking her death during a luxury holiday to Zanzibar in a plot to claim a £140,000 life insurance payout.

The pair, from Walsall in the West Midlands, claimed she had died in a car crash on the East African island on April 14 last year and submitted a death certificate to her insurance company the following month.

But officials at the insurance company became suspicious when they examined the documents but could find no record of the death registered with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the local authorities.

They reported the matter to specialist fraud investigators based at the City of London Police, who began an investigation.

After making inquiries, the woman’s 19-year-old son was arrested and when he was questioned, allegedly admitted that his mother was alive and well and living in Canada.

Police contacted the woman, who has not been named, and she agreed to return to the UK, where she was arrested by appointment at Perry Barr police station in Birmingham.

The woman was questioned by officers from the City of London’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.

It is believed that the pair planned to reunite in Canada once the payout had been received.

But a source said suspicions were aroused by the quality of the death certificate and subsequent inquiries failed to establish any record of a death of the Briton in the East African country at the time in question.

The son’s 24-year-old guardian, who is a relative, was also questioned under caution and all three were released on bail until April.

Zanzibar, which lies off the coast of Tanzania, is a popular destination for holidaymakers, with around 75,000 Britons visiting each year to enjoy its year-round sunshine and palm-fringed beaches.

But the Foreign Office warned of heightened tension in the region last year after local elections were re-run. In 2013 the island hit the headlines when two British girls, who were working as volunteers for a charity, were injured in an acid attack.

The alleged fake death plot is reminiscent of the infamous “canoe man” scam involving a married couple from north-east England.

In 2002 John Darwin, a former teacher from Co Durham, was reported missing by his wife Anne, who claimed he had been last seen paddling out into the North Sea in his canoe.

His body was never found and Mrs Darwin later collected his £25,000 life insurance payout.

It subsequently emerged that he had been secretly living in the house next door to his so-called widow.

They later moved to Panama where their plot began to unravel and, in 2007, after returning to the UK, they were arrested and charged with fraud.

In July 2008 they were both sentenced to more than six years in prison.

Last July a woman admitted fraud and money-laundering after continuing to pick up and spend her mother’s pension payments, three years after she died while in Las Vegas.