Italian man ‘dressed as dead mother in order to claim her pension’ | Italy

An Italian man has been charged with welfare fraud and hiding the body after allegedly dressing up as his dead mother – including imitating her hairstyle with a wig and wearing make-up and jewelery – to collect her pension.

The man, from Borgo Virgilio, close to the northern Italian city of Mantua, is alleged to have demanded thousands of euros in pension payments after his mother’s death in 2022. It is alleged that instead of reporting his mother’s death, he hid her body in his home.

Earlier this month, a suspicious staff member alerted police after the 56-year-old woman allegedly posed as her mother to renew her ID card at the local council office.

Authorities compared the official photo of the dead woman with the photo of her son. Investigators said police later checked the man’s home and found his body stashed in the laundry room.

Borgo Virgilio Mayor Francesco Aporti said: Corriere della Sera He said the man entered the council office disguised as an “old lady”. “She was wearing lipstick, nail polish, jewelry and old-fashioned earrings and had a lock of dark brown hair,” he said.

The mayor said the man tried to imitate a female voice, but a few masculine notes occasionally slipped out.

On closer inspection, council staff noted that the man’s neck was “a bit too thick and even the wrinkles were weird”. “The skin on her hands did not resemble that of an 85-year-old woman.”

Corriere reported that the man was an unemployed nurse with an annual income of €53,000 (£46,500) thanks to his mother’s pension and three properties.

This is not the first time that the body of a deceased pensioner in Italy has been hidden by his children in order to benefit from social benefits. In 2023, it was revealed that a man in Verona kept his mother’s body at home for five years while collecting her pension.

The same year, a similar discovery was made in a town in Puglia: In this case, a son had managed to hide his father’s body in the house for 10 years.