A Honduran man living in the United States reportedly pretended to be dead so his wife back home would stop asking him for money.

Danny Gonzalez, 27, took photos of himself with cotton wool stuffed into his nostrils and a white sheet over his body as if he were lying in a morgue.

He then sent them to his wife of two years living in Saba, southern Honduras, along with a picture of a flower-covered coffin in a funeral parlour and a message telling her he'd died from cancer.

Danny Gonzalez, 27, took photos of himself with cotton wool stuffed into his nostrils and a white sheet over his body as if he were lying in a morgue

However, the ruse backfired after local media in his hometown started to report his sudden death, and the news reached his shocked friends and elderly parents.

But it didn't take relatives long to realise Gonzalez appeared to be grinning in the photos.

Others noticed that he appeared to be lying in a doubled bed, and the white sheet over his body was actually a pillow cover.

He then sent them to his wife along with a message telling her he'd died from cancer and asthma

When local media finally found him alive, he admitted the hoax was a ploy to make his wife, who stayed in Honduras, believe he had passed away.

He told the TV Sur channel: 'My wife would call me every week just to ask to send more money.

'Every Saturday she would call me telling me I had sent her so much, and I needed to send her this much more.

'The rest of the week, not even a message. She would never send photos or ask my anything else.

He also sent an image of his coffin in the bizarre hoax to stop her asking him to send money

'She kept asking me to send her mobile phones. I'd already sent six and she always rang me to tell me it had been stolen.'

But a neighbour told the channel that the news of his death had been 'a terrible blow' for his elderly parents, who also live in Saba.

Other family members reportedly slammed him as 'an ungrateful son'. Social network users criticised Gonzalez, who had been living in the US for several years.

The ruse backfired after local media in his hometown started to report his sudden death, and the news reached his shocked friends and parents

One, Zuly Deras, wrote: 'Better to have been honest with your parents and tell them that you no longer want to help them, than not to lie in that way. You can really die after playing in that way. God have mercy on you.'

Many Honduras families rely on relatives who have made it to the US to help them financially.

From January to May 2018, $1.5 million US dollars were sent back home by Hondurans living in the States.