Haven’t seen this addressed here…
I have heard rumours (and, no, I don’t have any links) of people claiming relatives were in the WTC and are ‘missing,’ and thus, I would assume, attempting to scam some benefit thereof. Anyone else heard this?
Also, wouldn’t it be easy for someone who worked or did business near the WTC to ‘disappear,’ and thus be presumed dead?
It wouldn’t surprise me. Generally, to get a death certificate (which will be needed to get any benefits/insurance/etc, you need some ammount of proof that the person is dead. Usually even the smallest body part will do. There will probably be enough DNA-identifyable body parts to prove most of the missing people are dead. As for the others, if there is no proof, there is a long waiting period for a missing person to be declared dead.
It would be easy to do. Guliani lightened the requirements in this case. If they are listed as missing, the families can get death certificates. Being the financial district I imagine there are some lucrative life insurance policies involved.
Since they have said that there is the distinct possiblity that they will never recover all the bodies or even parts from all of them because some of them were probably vaporized in the fires, they are waiving the DNA/body requirement in this instance. IIRC, survivors have to bring ID and proof of relationship to the missing/deceased.
So it would be possible, I suppose, for someone to be able to pull off such a scam if they presented the correct documentation.
Was talking about this the other night…
A couple of years ago a train crashed in a tunnel in or around London. A horrific fire followed, and 20 [sub]makes up the numbers as she goes along[/sub] people were listed as missing. A short time later the ‘missing’ number was reduced to 2 or 3 [sub]see previous[/sub] as those people who had taken themselves off for an impromptu holiday returned.
My mother and I came to the conclusion that this would be a good time for people to disappear themselves.
What do they do with a DNA test anyway? Test it against, say, mine if I claim my son or mother was dead? What about spouses? If I was married and something horrible happened to me and my wife brought in my fingernail, it’s not like my DNA is on any master file to check it against.
(or maybe it is… enter the black helicopters)
I’ve been hearing weird unconfirmed reports, like a group of 5 badly injured illegal aliens from Ireland turned up in a clinic in New Jersey, they were afraid they’d be deported if they went to a hospital. So there are probably more than a few illegals whose families will never come forward and declare them as missing. But that’s just the opposite of what you were asking…
Joph, I think the idea is that your wife brings in the hairbrush for a baseline sample and the coroner collects specimens 1-6000 at the disaster site, from various body parts. When they find you match specimen #3762, they have evidence you were at the scene. If the body part is large enough, they have evidence you are no longer alive.
There was a bit on Dateline the other night about a woman whose husband is missing. He didn’t work in the WTC; he worked on Wall Street, and would presumably have no reason to have been in or near the WTC.
They had checked his subway card and were able to verify when he got on the train, and make an assumption about when he got to NYC, but they just can’t find the guy. He never made it in to the office that day.
My husband remarked that the guy saw an opportunity and took off for parts unknown, but he hadn’t withdrawn any money, his business was in good shape and the wife says their marriage was fine.
I can’t imagine what may have happened to him.
In amongst the 6000 missing persons, it seems quite likely that there would be at least one or two cases where people would grab the opportuniy to disappear and start a new life.
I know of one person who tried to fake her own death online saying that she died in the WTC’s destruction. It’s all covered at
http://www.geocities.com/stopaglaia
http://www.geocities.com/stopaglaia/hnusbaum.html
The latter link for the alleged online death notices. This woman has had a history of faking her death for attention but this particular incident is reprehensible.
[hijack]
I have personal experience with Nancy. She’s a scam artist to the hilt. I was recently interviewed by a New Jersey reporter who has been covering Nancy’s schemes for a while now. I won’t go into my own experience with Nancy - but I will suggest you read the webpage linked above (the first one) because what this woman has done will shock the hell out of you.
It doesn’t surprise me that she tried this - she told the reporter that she’d kill herself if the story ran. Quite the individual.
T
[/hijack]
This is quite an interesting article…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_471000/471490.stm
… particularly this paragraph
I wonder if something similar might have happened in N.York?
As a side point, I have a (very) vague recollection that some lad ended up being taken to court here in the UK after he faked his own death in a disaster (maybe rail?) of some kind.
I think he got to the scene and chucked some ID into the wreckage and let people draw their own conclusions. If I recall correctly, he was let off because
No cite for this, so the details might be a bit wibbly 
Quirm
I can’t tell if your last line is supposed to be sarcastic;
I don’t think it is.
Isn’t it likely he went to help victims and got killed?
No, it was not meant to be sarcastic.
That was the police’s theory (he went to help and got caught in the collapsing building) but his wife said he wouldn’t have done that; he had some health problems (couple of heart attacks, diabetes, I can’t remember exactly what). She said he would have called her to let her know he was okay, and would have come home.
I meant, I can’t imagine what would have happened to him, other than being caught in the panic and killed. I don’t see someone using the tragedy as an excuse to “run away” without at least taking some money.
Couldn’t he have been at the WTC anyway? I mean I have to beleive that there would be more than a few cases of people being at the WTC when no one would really think they would’ve been?
Exactly. The guy could’ve been running some mundane errand at or near the WTC as an excuse to get out of the office, or come in a little late, or grab a cappaccino & read the paper, etc.
This guy’s disappearance is definitely unfortunate, but probably not mysterious.
You may be thinking of this case that followed the Paddington/Ladbroke Grove rail crash. There was widespread press speculation about more such fakery in the aftermath of the accident, but this appears to be the only instance with any substance behind it. (I exclude the sickos, time-wasters and fantasists who, for reasons best known to themselves, tell the police that friends and relatives are missing.)
As the link Quirm posted shows, in the week or so after the crash the media were also speculating about numbers of fatalities far higher than the 31 finally determined. However much of this was based on things like estimating the total number of people who could have been in the devastated carriage or who might have caught the train. Unfortunately, the parallel with the WTC estimates seems more like the “possibly tens of thousands” figures one heard people use in the first few days.
Yeah, that was the case I was thinking about - cheers for digging it out!
– Quirm
i read in time magazine that they are checking names against employment records. many of the companies have offices that are not located in wtc and are able to retrieve the informations. they are using these list to distribute funds from red cross, united way, etc. i would figure that they would do the same for a death certificate.
goodness only knows what they are doing for visitors or people on the street.