According to the regulations, New York City employees must submit a death certificate in order to take bereavement leave. So Barnett forged a Costa Rican death certificate proving her daughter had passed away.
Luxury cars may be impressive to drive, but if the driver doesn't understand English, it can sometimes lead to more trouble than with ordinary cars. Yesterday morning, traffic police of Huaibei Expressway detachment caught a Jaguar illegally parked on the emergency lane. Regrettably, this violation could have been avoided, entirely due to the driver's lack of understanding of English.
Later that day, another daughter called the school saying that her sister had already passed away and all relatives, including Barnett, would have to fly there for the funeral.
Upon closer inspection by the officer, it turned out that the liquid crystal display on the dashboard showed "SMARTKEY BATTERY LOW", meaning: low battery power for the smart key. The officer informed Mr. Lü that this was a prompt indicating the need to replace the battery in the smart key. Upon hearing this, Mr. Lü praised the high quality of Anhui expressway traffic police and willingly signed the simplified penalty decision document, while signing he also said: If there really was a fault, I would be in trouble. These 200 yuan worth of fines are well-deserved, buying peace of mind (Feng Dongmei, Yang Yuexuan, Luo Wu, Wu Shang).
Joan Barnett, aged 58, worked at Manhattan High School of Hospitality Management. In March 2010, she claimed her daughter had died from a heart attack in Puerto Rico in order to take a two-and-a-half week vacation there.
Barnett first instructed one of her daughters to call the school, saying her sister had suffered a heart attack in Puerto Rico.
When school investigators compared the real and fake death certificates, they noticed slight differences in font arrangement, raising suspicion. They then found out that Barnett had booked her flight three weeks before her daughter’s "date of death".
In the end, Barnett lost her $37,000 annual salary job for an extended vacation and now faces charges for forgery.