Karen Maree Salkilld gets jail time for faking her own death and collecting $718,000 life insurance payout

A woman who faked her own death to claim a life insurance payout of more than $700,000 has been sentenced to three years in prison.

Karen Maree Salkilld was sentenced at Perth District Court after previously pleading guilty to obtaining advantage by fraud and knowingly using a false file to defraud.

In February, the 43-year-old received more than $718,000 from an insurance company after claiming she died in a car crash in Broome in December 2023.

Salkilld provided a death certificate, burial documentation and a letter from the coroner’s court to the company Insuranceline.

She applied at the end of January and the money was paid out on February 14.

During sentencing, Judge Vicki Stewart said Salkilld’s offending was not opportunistic and therefore a suspended sentence was not appropriate.

She said Salkilld, who had been living beyond her means and racking up several large debts, had taken steps to begin the fraud in January and continued the deception until she was arrested in March.

The court reviewed the facts, including the details of how Salkilld opened a MyState Bank account in her former partner’s name because she was the beneficiary.

There are no indications that the woman was aware of the crime.

‘Planned and relatively advanced’

Salkilld and the woman had been in a relationship for a number of years before splitting three years ago, but the pair had remained friends.

It meant Salkilld had access to the woman’s identity documents and could place her own face on the woman’s driver’s license and passport to use as identification, as well as set up an email account.

Although she was initially successful in transferring money to creditors and to herself, MyState Bank froze the new account under suspicion.

That then led Salkilld to try other ways to release the money, including visiting Palmyra police station to have the identification verified.

During her last visit to the police station, when she posed as her ex-partner, she was arrested.

Prosecutor Emily Roberts had previously described the crime as “planned and relatively sophisticated” and said it was not “victimless” because it involved a bank, an insurance company, police who certified documents, and her ex-partner.

During her sentencing, Judge Stewart also raised the fact that Salkilld’s crime was likely to have affected the bounties of others.

Inspired by film

Earlier, Salkilld’s lawyer Max Crispe told the court his client had been inspired by a film to fake her own death for money, but he did not specify which one.

During sentencing, the court was told of Salkilld’s history, including how she had received a $500,000 life insurance payout after her former partner died in 2018.

She has two daughters, born in 2012 and 2015, and lived in Broome for many years running an Aboriginal business before returning to Perth in 2019 where she bought a fitness franchise.

Her former partner provided the court with a character reference and Judge Stewart told Salkilld she spoke highly of her.

“She expressed concern for you, your children and herself,” Judge Stewart said.

Salkilld was sentenced to three years in prison. She will be eligible for parole once she has served half of that sentence.

Once the conviction was handed down, Judge Stewart issued court orders regarding the return of the money.

An order for damages in the amount of $101,771.11 is to be paid by Salkilld to the insurance company.

A restitution order was also issued for funds in the MyState Bank account, which was in two parts, one for $549,195.92 and another for $67,995.97, with the latter held in the bank’s fraud recovery account.

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