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Today's lesson in stupid schemes: If you're going to scam your boss for vacation time with your kid's fake death certificate, at least make sure the fonts match. It seems one Joan Barnett, a parent coordinator at a Manhattan school who, it's worth noting, was eligible for vacation time and summers off, decided she needed a little more downtime, reports WPIX. So, according to a recently unsealed report, she had her daughter call the school and inform them that a non-existent daughter had died suddenly in Costa Rica, and that the whole family was headed there. Upon her return from two weeks, em, bereavement leave, Barnett furnished the school with a sketchy-looking death certificate—which had mismatched fonts, causing her principal to turn it over to a school investigator.
"The fonts, there were different sized fonts, the name didn't seem to relate to Barnett," the school's investigator tells WABC. "We looked at airline records,"' he continues. "Although the death certificate said March 20, 2010, she had booked the flight in early March, so it was obvious she was going to Costa Rica for vacation." Barnett now has a lot of unexpected time off: She was fired, and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor forgery.
