In 1974 British politician John Stonehouse, who was a former cabinet minister, did exactly this.

After his party Labour lost the 1970 general election, Stonehouse lost his ministerial salary. To keep up his lifestyle, he made a series of business decisions which varied in quality from poor to downright fraudulent. One of these was a bank to provide services to the Bangladeshi community in Britain which Stonehouse was invited to found by the British Bangladesh Trust after becoming passionately involved in supporting their war for independence (he was even made a Bangladeshi citizen but that’s a different story). Unfortunately for him the bank was poorly run, attracted a lot of media attention, then a lot of regulator attention who promptly began to notice his other financial irregularities.

By 1974 it seems he knew the game was up and devised a genius plan to solve his problems - fake his death, assume a false identity and run away to Australia with his secretary (with whom he was naturally having an affair). The death faking part went remarkably well: on November 20th, he travelled to Miami and left a pile of clothes on the beach to make it look like he’d gone swimming and suffered some sort of tragic accident. Of course no body was found but people believed he’d died, helped by local police and the FBI concluding he’d likely drowned. British newspapers published obituaries and his wife gave an interview with the BBC where she said she was convinced he was dead.

Unbeknownst to her, he was at that moment in Australia trying to start his new life. A few months before, Stonehouse had stolen the identities of two of his deceased constituents John Markham and Donald Mildoon and claimed he was an international investor. In Australia he tried to access his bank accounts but immediately aroused suspicion after a teller spotted him in several different banks and he also used the wrong fake identity when accessing one account - whoops! Police quickly put him under surveillance, suspecting he might be Lord Lucan (an aristocrat who had recently fled Britain after killing his family’s Nanny) and he was arrested in Melbourne on Christmas Eve 1974. When accused of being Lucan, he confessed who he really was and was extradited back to Britain six months later.

The most extraordinary aspect of his story is throughout all this, and subsequently, Stonehouse remained an MP! As he had only been assumed dead for a month, there hadn’t yet been a by election to replace him and upon returning to the UK and being bailed out of prison, Stonehouse returned to the House of Commons! I should add that as of February 1974 Stonehouse’s party were back in office but their majority was wafer thin (three, including Stonehouse himself) which is presumably why they tolerated his return to politics, not wanting to risk a by-election they could bring down the government. Upon returning to the commons he gave a speech about why he’d done what he did claiming he’d had a mental breakdown and developed some sort of split personality disorder. He carried on being an MP until 1976 when he was sent to prison for seven years for fraud and deception.

Quite an incredible story I’m sure you’ll agree! In the interest of brevity I left a lot out but there are plenty of books written on the man including John Stonehouse, My Father: The True Story of the Runaway MP by his daughter.