PSEUDOCIDE RUNS AMUCK

Pseudocide, the fraud of faking a death for insurance purposes, is hardly a new idea. It's been going on for years. But in most cases, the "living dead" are real. In California, two women have just been charged with faking the death of fictitious folk.

Faye Shilling, 60 and Jean Crump, 67, both of California, had been taking out phony insurance policies on people they'd invented, then burying them at the funeral home where Crump worked. After holding funerals for their "victims" --- complete with closed caskets --- the women filed bogus paperwork to say that remains had been cremated and the ashes had been scattered at sea. They have both been charged with five counts of mail and wire fraud in their $1 million scam.

If convicted of all the counts, the women are facing sentences of up to 100 years.

For the record, pseudocide is a lot more common than many people understand. There are a few hundred cases a year in the United States. However, it is considerably more common in other places, notably Haiti, where it has turned into a mini-cottage industry. Pseudocide tourists--- almost always married couples --- can find helpful undertakers who will provide death and cremation certificates. When the tourists return home --- usually to the States --- they can put in an insurance claim on their "lost" loved one. It has happened so often in the past five years, that insurance companies now refer to Haiti as "the pseudocide capital of the world," and, not surprisingly, most of the claims with paperwork from there are investigated and frequently denied.