Fake death insurance scam: Furniture owner gets clemency

Desk report: Jose Lantigua, a Jacksonville, Florida, furniture store owner who faked his own death in an attempt to collect millions in life insurance benefits, was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison after authorities uncovered the elaborate fraud scheme.

Lantigua, the former owner of Circle K Furniture, performed his death during a 2013 trip to Venezuela as his business faced mounting debt. Federal prosecutors said he conspired with his wife, Daphne Simpson, to obtain fraudulent death certificates claiming he had died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare neurological illness sometimes referred to as ‘mad cow disease.’

Using the forged documents, Simpson returned to the United States and filed claims with several life insurers tied to policies worth about $6.6 million. Investigators later determined that roughly $871,000 in benefits had been paid before insurers became suspicious and halted additional payouts.

While Simpson filed the claims, Lantigua lived in hiding under a stolen identity in North Carolina. He later applied for a US passport and driver’s license using an alias, listing his occupation as a freelance writer.

The fraud unraveled when the US State Department used facial recognition technology at the Charleston Passport Center to compare his passport application photo with known images of Lantigua. Media reports questioning the circumstances of his reported death also helped trigger the investigation.

Authorities arrested Lantigua in March 2015. He later pleaded guilty to charges including bank fraud, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, passport fraud and aggravated identity theft. A federal judge sentenced him to 14 years in prison in 2017, according to the US Department of Justice.

Simpson also pleaded guilty to related fraud charges. The scheme later landed Lantigua on the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud’s ‘Hall of Shame.’

In December 2024, President Joe Biden commuted Lantigua’s sentence to time served as part of a broader clemency action affecting individuals previously released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic.