YouTuber declares self legally “dead” in hopes of getting a refund from an airline
Airlines can be notoriously stingy when it comes to refunds. Unless one pays for an upgraded package that allows them to cancel their flight at will, they will more than likely incur a fee for doing so.
While there are some tricks to getting your flight refunded, the only surefire way to get one’s money back is if the passenger dies—and so, one YouTuber decided that he was going to do just that.
Max Fosh is a YouTube creator known for stunts that frequently exploit legal or contractual loopholes. For example, one video shows him, in his words, “technically” starting the third largest religion in the United Kingdom; another showed him legally becoming a member of the royal family for 43 minutes, while a further video documented him having the world’s shortest marriage to a stranger.
Now, Fosh has had himself declared legally dead. And it’s all revenge for an airline charging him a £37.28 cancellation fee, equivalent to around $51 USD.
How did this man declare himself dead?
In his YouTube video, which currently has over 1.3 million views, Fosh shows himself researching the rules around flight regulations, censoring the particular airline on the advice of his lawyer.
“According to the terms and conditions on [the airline’s] website…it states, in order to get a refund, the passenger must be deceased,” Fosh explains.
Naturally, he then begins figuring out ways around it. After a bit of consideration, he determines that the only way he could get a refund is if he had himself declared legally dead—and so, he began the process of reaching out to every nation on Earth to see if they would write him a fake death certificate.
One group responded to him: the Principality of Seborga. While this micronation does not enjoy any international recognition, the principality does have its own flag, coat of arms, and currency, and, as Fosh soon discovered, it can print its own death certificates.
Fosh then traveled to Seborga, where he was greeted with a playing of the micronation’s anthem, the launching of a cannon, a tour, and, eventually, the signing of a one-off death certificate, which Fosh jokes is for himself “dying” by having his jokes not land. Fosh follows this up by holding a funeral for himself, then sending the information about his “death” to the airline.
Did it work?
Unbelievably, this whole process appears to have worked, sort of.
Soon after submitting the paperwork, Fosh is contacted by the airline and instructed to fill out additional information to process his refund. However, Fosh also reached out to his lawyer to confirm whether this would be okay to do, to which the lawyer responded with multiple utterances of the word “no.”
“It’s not fraud, but, I mean, it is fraudulent,” the lawyer is saying via phone in the video. Fosh also includes a clip of his lawyer saying that, “this time, I really have to put my foot down here.”
To close the video, Fosh begs viewers not to do what he has done before, saying that viewers should “join me next time, where I try to commit less fraud.”
So, can you do this?
Even though Fosh ends his video by advising viewers not to do what he did, many commenters still wondered if such an act was possible, especially outside of the United Kingdom.
However, as Fosh alludes to at the end of his video, it is likely that this action would be criminal in both places.
First, as Fosh’s lawyer notes, there may be a grey area in the United Kingdom as Fosh is technically only getting his own money back. That said, it could be argued that Fosh is in violation of Section 2 of the U.K.’s Fraud Act 2006, “Fraud by false representation.” The act says that one is in breach of this section if one “dishonestly makes a false representation, and…intends, by making the representation…to make a gain for himself or another.”
One could argue that paperwork submitted by an unrecognized micronation is not legally binding, provided that the Principality of Seborga death certificate was simply ceremonial and did not go through the process of having Fosh’s death registered with the country of Italy.
However, under the Fraud Act 2006, it’s likely that this would still be illegal, as “A representation is false if (a)it is untrue or misleading, and (b)the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.” It could be argued that Fosh knew that claims that he had passed away, despite still running a YouTube channel and touring as a comedian, are “misleading.”
How would this work in the USA?
In the United States, it appears that such claims would also be fraudulent.
To start, any submission of paperwork claiming that one is dead despite themselves knowing that they are alive would likely be viewed as wire fraud. Additionally, many states have their own fraud statutes that could apply.
There are some cases on the internet of people faking death certificates to get out of paying minor fines. For example, in 2007, the Seattle Times covered a story in which a man had a friend fax a fake death certificate for him to get out of paying a $175 bill. The scheme did not work and the man had to pay, though he appears to have avoided any legal repercussions.
In conclusion, if one really wants to get repaid for their cancelled flight, the best course of action is to simply buy the insurance, not go through the process of faking your own death.
We’ve reached out to Max Fosh, who politely declined to comment.
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