FAKE YOUR DAUGHTER'S DEATH AND GET VACATION TIME....WHAT?

In another case of "what the hell is wrong with people?", a New York City school employee was recently caught for scamming the system to get a week off for a vacation in Costa Rica by pulling off the hoax of all hoaxes. What did she do, you ask? Well, she convinced her bosses that she couldn't work because her daughter had died.

Joan Barnett, a parent coordinator at the Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management, was so determined to make sure that she made it to Spring Break 2010 that first, she had one of her daughters call the school to say that her sister had suffered a heart attack in Costa Rica. Next, she had another daughter call the school later that day to say that her sister had died, and about a dozen relatives, including her mom, were traveling to Costa Rica for the funeral. Then, she faxed a forged death certificate of her daughter "Xinia Daley Herman" to the school as proof of the death, a document required by a city school employee asking for bereavement days.

Thanks to the scam, Barnett was able to spend two and a half weeks in lovely Costa Rica back in March 2010 including her school sanctioned Spring Break. Is this story unbelievable or what? Anyway, a school official quickly grew suspicious of the death certificate because of the 'slightly different fonts which were not aligned properly'.

Costa Rican government officials later confirmed that the certificate was indeed a fake and that the identification numbers matched that of a man who died back in 2005. Investigators were also able to determine that Barnett booked the tickets for her vacation three weeks before her trip, and long before her daughter's supposed death.

When confronted of the forgery evidence, Barnett insisted that her daughter, indeed, died of a heart condition, and that the death certificate was, indeed, real! What? Barnett even went as far as submitting another death certificate, this time with the month and year changed to March 2010, according to court records. The morbid scam cost Barnett her $37,000-a-year job with the school. She also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor over forgery Manhattan Criminal Court this past fall. Can I say it again? What the hell is wrong with people?