Seriously, if you’re gonna go fake your death, might I suggest not doing so in a way that is guaranteed to draw attention?

Financial advisor Marcus Schrenker, 38, left Anderson, Indiana, on Sunday in a single-engined Piper en route for Florida, the BBC reports. Over Alabama, he radioed in a distress call claiming the aircraft’s windscreen had “imploded” and that he was bleeding.

Two military aircraft were scrambled to assist, but found the plane “flying on autopilot, with its door open and no sign of the pilot”. It subsequently crashed in a swamp near Milton, Florida, where investigators discovered “no signs of blood or a smashed windshield”

Now, I’m no expert on the physics of things hitting other things, but how is it that the dude managed to set his autopilot so that the plane bellyflopped in such a way that the frickin’ windscreen didn’t even break…

Plus, it’s Florida. It contains some of the most ready military forces in the US – how likely was it that someone with eyeballs wasn’t going to get close enough to see that there wasn’t anybody in?

Some smart people really are stupid, y’know…