Business Owner Supposedly Dead For Two Years Arrested in North Carolina

Jose Lantigua of Jacksonville, Florida faked his own death for two years and swindled 9 million dollars from insurance companies. North Carolina police recently caught up with Lantigua and arrested him.

Jose Lantigua was the owner of Circle K furniture in Jacksonville, Florida. He reportedly died while on vacation in Venezuela in 2013. After his "death", the business was shut down and a 8 million dollar debt was left on the estate.

Oddly enough, before his vacation Lantigua managed to collect an estimated 9 million dollars from insurance companies.

One of the insurance companies launched their own investigation against Lantigua. In Hartford Life and Annuity Insurance Co's lawsuit, they claim that Lantigua bribed a Venezulean government employee to state that he was cremated on his birth certificate. In fact, Gawker states that he also bribed the employee to say he assigned benefits claims to local creditors before his "death".

Things just keep getting weirder. Lantigua's son, Joseph, said Hartford Life are the real liars in this case. Lantigua claims Hartford made it seem as is the death certificate is fake and Venezuela revoked the document.

Later, Hartford admitted that a Venezuelan lawyer did falsify the documents to make it seems as if the death certificate was a fake. Hartford claims they were unaware of this.

A judge determined that the documents were in fact false, but could not determine who faked the documents.

A warrant for Lantigua's arrest was issued about a year ago but was later dropped due too "underlying information in the case".

Daphne Simpson is the wife of Lantigua. She was never arrested because it wasn't clear if she knew that her husband was alive or not. However, she was in the car when Lantigua was pulled over by police this weekend.

Very weird story to say the least.