[CrookedJ]

I don't know how many remember the BRe-x scandal from back in 1996 ( a lot of you would have been too young) BUt it appears that one of the villians may have faked his own death.

Basically a Canadian Mining company claimed to have found an enourmous gold deposit in the Indonesian jungle. The raised millions and millions ( there was a 6 Billion $$ offer for the company) It all turned out to be fake, and then one of the guys(Guzman) who'd pull the scam "fell" out of a helicopter over Thailand in an apparent suicide, pretty much ending the whole scandal.

Well Guzman's "widow" recieved a cheque from her supposedly dead husband last week for $25000 from some bank in Brazil!!

Her take:

“Sometimes I think I’m in a movie,” Genie de Guzman, 42, told the newspaper. “There has never been any closure. I never believed he was dead.”

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...2154&t=TS_Home

What do you think - how could you fake your death be falling from a helicopter? Could you get a parachute off in time from a helicopter, would no-one notice?

[speedythief]

So were there witnesses in the helicopter or on the ground, or was it a secondhand story?

I could fake my death in any number of ways for the kind of money he stole. Especially in South America, home of the Nazi war criminals. Money talks.

[CrookedJ]

I beleive the account was from the helicopter, no doubt one of his co-conspirators in the company could have easily lied and lined his own pockets a bit.

Heres an account from Macleans' Archive

At Samarinda airport - a registered airport, not just a jungle-hop strip - the practice is to ensure that helicopter passengers are strapped in before takeoff and the doors securely shut. The Alouette took off for Busang. That was the last anyone other than the occupants of the helicopter saw of de Guzman alive. Seventeen minutes later, he plunged - the first reports said he "fell" - 240 m into the dense Borneo jungle. But people do not just fall from helicopters, and de Guzman was no exception. The news was later revised. De Guzman had jumped, committing suicide because, said a Bre-X spokesman, he was suffering from hepatitis B.

Others took a different tack. Daniel McConvey, a New York City gold analyst who had visited the site in the summer of 1996 and who had written one of the most comprehensive reports on the project, downgraded his stock recommendation to a neutral from outperform.McConvey was stunned by the reported suicide. Activist Bre-X shareholder Gregory Chorny did not buy the suicide explanation at all. "Prove to me he’s dead," said Chorny, an Aurora, Ont., investor who had already made $40 million from Bre-X stock. "I want to see the autopsy reports. Show me an open casket. Show me the fingerprint evidence."

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c...=M1ARTM0011316

Upon closer examination he just dissapeared from the aircraft. Everyone was strapped in, and he was missing, a suicide note was the proof. IT also appears that his remains were never found ( if looked for). This makes it much easier to have faked.