Robert Berger is now facing an additional four years in prison after allegedly attempting to fake his own death to get out of criminal charges.
Berger, 25, was arraigned Tuesday on charges of offering a false instrument for filing, per the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office. Berger had already pleaded guilty to attempted theft of a truck and possession of a stolen Lexus. (RELATED: Hungarian Scientists Accidentally Create New Type Of Fish)
“Typos and formatting errors gave up what we allege is a forged death certificate that this defendant used to avoid accountability for other crimes,” Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said in the office statement. “Submitting fake documents to prosecutors is always a bad idea, and while he’d have been caught regardless, failure to use spell check made this alleged fraud especially glaring.”
Meir Moza, a representative from the firm of Berger’s former attorney, reportedly notified the court that Berger had died and that he had been provided a death certificate from Berger’s fiancee. When the certificate was inspected, the district attorney’s office found that the font type and size in the document had changed, according to the statement.
Prosecutors say a man tried to escape sentencing by faking a death certificate, but misspelled registry as “Regsitry.”
“Submitting fake documents to prosecutors is always a bad idea…failure to use spell check made this alleged fraud especially glaring.” https://t.co/lz50CQOmDp
— NPR (@NPR) July 22, 2020
The office also noticed that the word “Registry” was misspelled as “Regsitry.” The district attorney sent the certificate to the New Jersey Department of Health, Vital Statistics and Registry, where it was confirmed as fake.
“It will never cease to amaze me the lengths some people will go to to avoid being held accountable on criminal charges,” Singas told the AP.