When people fake their deaths,how do they go about starting their new life without getting caught like they do in the movies and spies?
What is the step by step process they do and is it still possible in modern times?
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In pre-internet times, one method was to watch the obituaries. You could find someone who just died, then create a fake version of their ID with your image to use out of town. Any records with things like social security numbers or drivers license numbers will accept yours as valid because the person actually existed, so there isn’t an immediate flag to say that its fake. All you had to do was make sure you never interacted with anyone who knew/knew of the real dead person.
These days with everything being digital and available almost instantly, its far harder to fake.
Simple things like photo ID to buy alcohol can be pulled off if you’re talented, but you wouldn’t have much luck using it anywhere that they would want to verify your ID. Cops who ran the number would know, banks would know, etc.
I believe people used to start by getting a copy of a birth certificate for a baby of a similar age that died very young and from there apply for passport etc.
Before the modern era it was super easy because there wasn’t a whole lot of ‘evidence’ one way or the other. Simply leaving the area was enough in most instances unless you were infamous for something and immediately recognizable (think cartoonish scar on your face) and as long as you didn’t come up with an outlandish backstory no one would really dig.
“I’m John Smith I came here from New York because my parents died and I wanted to start a new life down south. Oh, I used to work at a factory and only speak English” Pre-1935 this would have been all you’d need.
In modern times as others have pointed out it is much harder, at least within the US. Depending on what assets you have available it may be as simple as moving to a poor nation and bribing a few people for documentation (which costs far less than you are expecting, like in Georgia the minimum wage for the entire year is about 350 usd…so you don’t exactly have to be wealthy to get things like a work visa…or just decide not to work and just get permission to live in the nation)
And again it really depends on how much someone is actually looking for you. Like if the US government wants to find you and actually commits to the search good luck you would need quite a bit of money to try to stay hidden. But if you are just ‘some guy’ then they aren’t going to really search
In general it is exceptionally difficult to do without substantial assistance. Typically you need a state actor of some sort to handle the details if you are serious about not getting caught.
If you’re going about it without the sponsorship of state actors, you would need to live a seriously uneventful life. Places like police stations, hospitals, unemployment centers, and universities are all places that could easily unmask an amateur assuming an identity. DNA and fingerprints are the most common ways that this happens; nowadays it is fairly common for a lot of background checks run on people to look for hallmarks of fake identity, and funds moved under the name of a deceased person raises a big red flag for those trying to cut off things like terrorism funding. Large sums being moved for things like buying a house would be a big risk too, same story for life insurance payouts.
TLDR; possible, easy to slip up and get caught, would not recommend
They certainly don’t start by asking on Reddit, or Googling related questions on their personal device and/or easily traceable internet connection.
It’s easy if nobody knows you or has any interest in you, but if you’re fairly known then other people will start searching for you and it becomes extremely hard, you have to be completely forgotten from history in order to do so, if people contact the police about you and they have your identity and know how you look they have enough set of tools to find you quite easily.
I have no clue how he did it but friend from Irak bought a Norwegian citizenship for aprox. 250 000 kroner in Turkey.
He was a refugee from Saddam’s Irak and the furthest he could travel by plane was to Turkey. after asking around for a few months in Istanbul he finally found a guy who could make him a Norwegian passport. He had an aunt who lived in norway and she flew down and gave him 150 000kr. the remaining 100 000 he already had. Waited 2 months in a hotel after the deal made and was told to never go outside( His Visa for staying in Turkey was no more)….got norwegian passport, citizenship and driver’s license. flew to Norway. Police caught him in the airport. Was sent to immigration and questioned hard by the police about the guy in turkey but he told me he never gave him up. He ofc lost all his fake papers.
While in the immigration process he worked without a work permit in the nights cleaning industry halls to pay back his aunt.
One of the most loyal, hard working and friendly guy I know.
You don’t need to fake your death in your situation, that’s extreme. You just have a shitty family from what you’ve been posting the last month or so.
I like your military idea – it’ll give you some life experience and let you see some different parts of the world.
If not, apply for jobs out of state and move away – if you have a friend willing to go – even better. At 18, you can walk away from your family if you really don’t like them. No need to fake your death or create a new identity.
I’m amazed none of the existing answers have said it, when it’s really very simple: you have to bribe someone.
Ultimately in any system, in any government, there are people with the power to create identities (maybe they literally are the license printer, or maybe they have the power to “fix ID-related mistakes”, effectively creating “new people” in the process). All it takes is finding one of those people who is corrupt, and having enough money to pay them..
Fraud and lies. You have to realize that not the brightest people are in charge of the offices that govern the identities of citizens. Even today the human element is very failable
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