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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

One answer - "don't use the phone registered to you" after you "die"!

If you keep reading past the first page, it turns out that he didn't: he deliberately left it in a gas station in the hope that somebody else would pick it up and start using it -- that way the police would wind up pursuing that person and give up when that line of inquiry led to a dead end.

The first part of the plan worked, but the second part didn't -- they never tracked down the guy who picked up the phone, but the fact that the phone was being used was enough to convince the police that he was still alive.

I guess the real lesson here is that simplicity is the best policy. His plan probably sounded brilliant in his head, but made too many assumptions about the way other people would behave.

Uh, you post supports my original point. Plausibly vanishing with no leads whatsoever is best...

If he had just destroyed the phone (broken in the water?), then his death would have been much more plausible. Why would he leave it somewhere if he had drowned?

If you read that part of the article, it says that he abandoned it prior to his faked death (a week prior he left it at a gas station or convenience store, iirc).

(No one reading the article? what is this? slashdot?)

He didn't, he left it at a gas station so it's finder would use it and lead the investigators astray. It's later in the article.

The author seems to think this was a good ruse, but I think I disagree; if I were an investigator, I think any coincidence, such as a cell phone accidentally left at a gas station, would be something I'd want to look into.

That may be, but it seemed to be the charges to the corp. credit card that really made them suspicious. The cellphone seemed to just be a quick confirmation that he was still alive. Though it would seem awfully suspicious for him to abandon his cellphone without reporting it missing/stolen (even if the police tracked down the thief).

[ I'm assuming he didn't report it missing, because the article doesn't say so, and because it doesn't make sense that messages sent to unknown numbers from a stolen cellphone would mean that he's alive to investigators. ]

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