A woman who supposedly died in a car crash in Western 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 her business in Perth – shopping, running her F45 studio and returning home – after committing insurance fraud.
Ambushed while coming out of the North Lake shopping centre car park, Salkilld snapped when she was asked: ‘Why did you fake your own death?’
Clutching her hands to her chest, she hit back: ‘What the hell! Who are you guys? I’m not talking to you guys.’
The journalist followed her as she prepared to cross the road and asked: ‘How did you think you could get away with it? You’re charged with serious fraud offences.’
Salkilld’s elaborate fraud scheme involved pretending to be her female partner to claim a massive life insurance payout after faking her own death.
According to Nine, Salkilld initiated the fraud on February 7 by starting a life insurance claim with a company while posing as her partner.
The claim stated Karen Salkilld had died in a car crash in Broome two months earlier.
Salkilld included a falsified death certificate, a WA Coroner’s Court letter and a record of investigation into the supposed death.
A week later, the insurance company paid out $718,923 into a bank account opened by Salkilld in the name of her partner, who is not implicated in Salkilld’s fraud.
Over the next few days, Salkilld made several payments from the account, but due to their nature, the bank flagged the payments and froze the account.
In an effort to unfreeze the account, Salkilld went to Palmyra police station with various forms of ID, including a Medicare card and a driver’s licence, certified by a police officer.
These copies of the IDs were heavily altered before being submitted to the bank, but they did not pass the verification process, Nine reports.
Police arrested Salkilld in March. On her first appearance in court, she pleaded guilty to offences including gaining benefit by fraud and intent to defraud by knowingly using a false record.
Salkilld is an assistant football coach for the East Fremantle Sharks club, and operates the F45 fitness studio in Applecross, Perth.
Her social media pages include photographs of her with her two children in Broome.
Due to be sentenced in the Western District Court in July, she faces up to seven years in prison.
When 9News followed her to her Perth home, she turned on the reporter and said: ‘Are you trying to make everything worse? Or are you trying to put F45 under the banner again or what?’
After entering her property, she yelled through the fence: ‘Jesus Christ, go and find someone else.’