On the forums that I have run, I have seen 2 deaths faked.
The most recent was in December 2014 where a person claiming to be the partner of the guy who had allegedly died was then asking for contributions to help cover a funeral.
At the time it sowed a fair degree of mistrust, and the only way the community was able to move on was to pull together in secret to prove conclusively whether or not the person had died. What this meant is that about 50 people spent a chunk of time checking morgues, hospitals, location hints, police reports and other details until not only did we have an overwhelming amount of evidence it was faked, but could actually prove he was alive and well.
But then what? What do you do with someone who has done that?
The only answer that was palatable to us is that the person should be permanently excluded from the community.
It's taken the real death of another person to remind us that not everyone is like that and to restore a lot of the trust and faith in each other.
The damage a fake death does to a community is significantly more than the damage the person who faked it does to themselves. And you can be sure that the person who does it will lose a lot of friends forever and find it hard to find a place in which someone doesn't know someone that knows.
The world isn't a big enough place for someone to get away with this now, it's all interconnected.
The most recent was in December 2014 where a person claiming to be the partner of the guy who had allegedly died was then asking for contributions to help cover a funeral.
At the time it sowed a fair degree of mistrust, and the only way the community was able to move on was to pull together in secret to prove conclusively whether or not the person had died. What this meant is that about 50 people spent a chunk of time checking morgues, hospitals, location hints, police reports and other details until not only did we have an overwhelming amount of evidence it was faked, but could actually prove he was alive and well.
But then what? What do you do with someone who has done that?
The only answer that was palatable to us is that the person should be permanently excluded from the community.
It's taken the real death of another person to remind us that not everyone is like that and to restore a lot of the trust and faith in each other.
The damage a fake death does to a community is significantly more than the damage the person who faked it does to themselves. And you can be sure that the person who does it will lose a lot of friends forever and find it hard to find a place in which someone doesn't know someone that knows.
The world isn't a big enough place for someone to get away with this now, it's all interconnected.