New details have emerged of how a fitness trainer brazenly stole her lover’s identity and faked her own death as part of an outrageous $700,000 life insurance scam.
Perth mother-of-two Karen Salkilld, 43, posed as her partner in February to tell her life insurance company she had died in a car crash two months earlier.
Salkilld submitted a claim with a fake death certificate, a falsified Western Coroner’s Court letter and a mocked up record of investigation into the death which she said happened in her original hometown of Broome, north-west WA.
But now it’s been revealed the con came unstuck after she had hamfistedly stuck her own photograph over her partner Kelly Winter’s identity papers as part of the scam.
The shocking detail was revealed after Salkilld said just six words when she appeared in court on fraud charges and desperately tried to fast track the legal process.
At the brief hearing in Fremantle Magistrates Court in March this year, Magistrate Nicholas Lemmon noted the ‘unusual’ amounts involved in the fraud.
And he revealed that when police asked ‘Kelly Winter’ to report to Palmyra Police Station, Salkilld used the falsified documents to prove her identity.
Mr Lemmon put it to Salkilld that on February 10 this year she ‘knowingly produced in an attempt to defraud … namely a passport, a West n motor driver’s licence and Medicare card’.
His Honour asked Salkilld if the items were in ‘the name Kelly Winter while displaying your likeness?’
Salkilld agreed.
The hoax was initially successful and a week after the fake claim, the insurance company paid out $718,923 into a bank account opened by Salkilld in her partner’s name.
But the fraud unravelled when Salkilld began making large withdrawals from the account. The bank flagged the payments and froze the account before police stepped in.
Despite facing serious fraud charges, the so-called ‘dead woman walking’ has regularly been seen casually going about her business.
Sallkild has been spotted shopping, running her F45 studio and returning home to the $1m Perth rental she shares with her partner and young daughters.
Salkilld is also an assistant football coach for the East Fremantle Sharks club, and has operated at one of two F45 fitness studios in Perth, at Applecross and Dianella.
Her partner, who lives with her at Myraee in southern Perth, is not implicated in the scam.
Salkilld faces up to seven years in jail when she appears before WA District Court for sentencing, with another hearing now set for August 23.
She has pleaded guilty to a string of offences including gaining benefit by fraud and intent to defraud by knowingly using a false record.
However in her two-minute plea hearing in March, described by her lawyer as ‘fast-track guilty pleas’, Salkilld has already indicated she will use a psychological assessment to beg for leniency prior to her sentencing.
Despite the brazen fraud attempt, Salkilld has strenuously objected to the spotlight being on her extraordinary deception.
Ambushed by TV cameras while coming out of the North Lake shopping centre car park in June, 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.’
A Current Affair journalist Michael Stamp followed her as she crossed the road and asked: ‘How did you think you could get away with it?
‘You’re charged with serious fraud offences.’
Chased back to her house, she yelled from inside her fence: ‘Jesus Christ, go and find someone else.’
When Daily Mail found Salkilld out shopping in Perth, she looked angry while withdrawing a wad of $50 notes.
Wearing a salmon pink P.E Nation sweatshirt and black leggings, Salkilld frowned and clenched her fists as she withdrew the cash from an ATM in Perth’s southern suburbs.
If she receives a custodial sentence, she is likely to go to Bandyup Women’s Prison in northeastern Perth, which accommodates female inmates with complex needs.