An unemployed Italian man has been caught dressing up as his dead mother to allegedly claim her pension, pocketing around €53,000 ($95,000) annually thanks to her pension payments and portfolio of three houses.
The 56-year-old man, who is a former nurse from Mantua, successfully pocketed the pension payments for three years after his mother’s death at the age of 82 by not reporting her death.
The Sun reported that he wrapped her body in a bed sheet, stuffed it in a sleeping bag and hid it away in his house for so long that her corpse became mummified.
To claim her pension, he underwent a “Mrs Doubtfire-style transformation,” by cutting his hair, putting on makeup and her pearl necklace and clip earrings.
Suspicions were raised when he went to a government agency in town in the hope of renewing his mother’s identity card that had expired a few months earlier.
An employee alerted the police and the local mayor, and authorities then compared photos of the mother and son. It was only then that they realised they had been deceived.
Police summoned him to the town hall to lure him out. They then went to his home where they discovered the body of his mother tucked away in the laundry room.
“He came into the council offices wearing a long skirt, he was wearing lipstick and nail varnish, a necklace and old-style earrings,” said Francesco Aporti, the mayor of Borgo Virgilio.
“But up close his neck was too thick and his wrinkles were strange, the skin on his hands did not seem to be that of an 85-year-old woman.
“His voice was feminine but every so often it dipped and sounded masculine.
“But I might not have noticed these strange features had they not been pointed out.”
Once the fraud was revealed, he agreed to police inspecting his home.
“They searched the house and found a mummified body,” said the mayor.
“She probably died of natural causes but that will be established by the post-mortem.
“It is a very strange story and very, very sad.”
In a statement, Italy’s military police said the mother’s body was wrapped in bed sheets and a sleeping bag.
“The body was in a clear state of mummification,” they said.
A post-mortem will be conducted, and the man is under investigation for illegally concealing a body and benefit fraud.
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