A Perth woman who supposedly died in a car crash in Western Australia last December has been caught faking her own death to claim more than $700,000 in life insurance.
Karen Salkilld, 42, was caught by a 9News journalist casually going about her business in Perth — shopping, running her F45 studio, and returning home after committing insurance fraud.
Ambushed 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 and said: ‘What the hell. Who are you guys? I’m not talking to you guys’.
The 9News 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.
Karen Salkilld (above) who supposedly died in a car crash in the Western Australian town of Broome last December has been caught faking her own death to claim more than $700,000
The 42-year-old F45 fitness instructor became angry when challenged about her elaborate fraud which included impersonating her own partner to claim life insurance for for faked 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 that 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 Karen in the name of her partner, who is not implicated in Salkilld’s fraud.
When reporter Michael Stamp asked Salkilld why she faked her own death she snapped back ‘Jesus Christ, go and find someone else’
Fraudster Karen Salkilld is an assistant football coach for the East Fremantle Sharks club
Salkilld, pictured (left) in Broome, which is where she claimed she died in a car accident last December, and (right) at her F45 fitness studio where she casually went about her business this week after pleading guilty to a $700k 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 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 Australia 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’.
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