A 25-year-old New York man recently attempted to avoid jail by faking his own death. Model citizen and aspiring Photoshop wizard Robert Berger created a fake death certificate after pleading guilty to two charges of vehicle theft.

Mr. Berger then managed to trick his lawyer into believing he was actually dead and had him submit the forgery to the court. He would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Oh wait, wrong story. 😉

In reality, it was Berger's lackluster command of the English language and his novice understanding of digital image manipulation that gave him away.

"Submitting fake documents to prosecutors is always a bad idea," said Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas, "And while he'd have been caught regardless, failure to use spell check made this alleged fraud especially glaring."

Here's the document in all its glory:

The DA's office quickly noticed that Berger had misspelled the word "Registry" in the "Issued By" section of the document, and the differing font type/size was more than a bit suspicious. After a quick check with the New Jersey Department of Health, Vital Statistics, and Registry, the DA's office slapped him with the additional charge of "offering a false instrument for filing" (a charge that could add 4 years to his sentence).

Stay in school, kids!