An F45 gym franchise owner who faked her own death to collect a $700,000 life insurance payout has been jailed for three years.
Karen Salkilld – who claimed she was killed in a car crash – was sentenced in the Perth District Court on Monday.
In February, the 43-year-old posed as her partner Kelly Winter to tell the insurance company that she had died in an accident two months earlier in Broome, WA.
She filed a claim using a false death certificate, a forged letter from the Western Australia Coroner’s Court and a fake report of the death investigation.
The hoax was initially successful and a week after the false claim the insurance company paid $718,923 into a bank account opened by the mother of two in Ms Winter’s name.
But the fraud unraveled when Salkilld began making large withdrawals from the account.
The bank flagged the payments and froze the account before police intervened.
Despite serious allegations of fraud, the so-called ‘dead woman walking’ was regularly seen casually going about her business.
Karen Salkilld (pictured) has been convicted of faking her own death by impersonating her partner by ‘displaying her likeness’ on a passport and driving license in her partner’s name and posing as her to obtain a to claim insurance benefits
Salkilld used the documents of her partner Kelly Winter, who is not involved in the scam, to pose as her after faking her own death to defraud $718,923.
During Monday’s sentencing hearing, Judge Vicki Stewart said Salkilld’s crime took effort and perseverance and was not ‘opportunistic’. WA Today reported.
“You lived beyond your means and you overextended yourself,” she said.
Salkilld had moved back to Perth in 2019, bought an F45 gym and part-owned a farm with her mother in Beverley, 133km south-east of Perth.
In 2023, with mounting debts, she decided to sell the farm, but a deal to do so fell through and she had already said she would buy another F45 gym, the court heard.
The farm was eventually sold for less than she had hoped and Salkilld hatched a plan to fake her own death.
Mrs Winter – who the court heard had nothing to do with the fraud – wrote a character reference in support of her former partner and said she was concerned for the Salkilld children if their mother ended up in prison.
But Judge Stewart said her crime was too serious for a suspended sentence and jailed her for three years.
Salkilld must also repay $101,771 to TAL Insurance, which owns Insurance Line, after the judge ordered the return of $617,191 held by MyState Bank.
She will be eligible for parole in February 2026 after serving half of her sentence, which goes back to August 2024. However, police indicated she could also face charges over the fraud.