He Left a Suicide Note for His Mom. He Wasn't Really Dead

When David Adler Staveley's unlocked car was found near the Atlantic Ocean in May 2020, with his wallet inside, family members assumed the Massachusetts man was dead. After all, the 54-year-old had left what appeared to be suicide notes for his associates and relatives, including his 80-year-old mother, per the Washington Post. Authorities now say it was all a ruse, and not Staveley's first. Only three weeks earlier, Staveley had become "the first person in the country charged with fraudulently seeking forgivable pandemic relief small-business loans" under the CARES Act, according to a release from the US Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island.

Investigators accused Staveley and an accomplice of defrauding the federal government out of more than half a million dollars. Staveley, 54, of Andover and David Butziger, 53, of Warwick, RI, had received $543,959 through the Paycheck Protection Program after falsely claiming to own three restaurants and another business with "large monthly payrolls," according to the Thursday release. "In fact, they did not own the businesses." Some loan applications were placed in Staveley's brother's name, per the Post. After he was released to home detention with electronic monitoring, "Staveley removed his electronic monitoring device, staged his own suicide, and fled," according to the release.

Investigators say he changed his phone number five times over three months while moving between several states before he was tracked to Alpharetta, Ga., on July 23, 2020. He had "multiple false identification documents that he had used throughout the period of his flight," court records note. He's pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and failure to appear in court, as he skipped out on a June hearing. He was sentenced Thursday to four-plus years in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Butziger pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in September 2020 and is due to be sentenced Nov. 1, per MassLive. (More faked death stories.)