Man masquerades as dead mom in pension scam

An Italian man is accused of spending years masquerading as his dead mother in order to collect her pension, only for authorities to find her mummified corpse at his home.

In what’s being compared to a “Mrs. Doubtfire”-esque con, the 58-year-old unemployed nurse allegedly covered his face in wax as he sported a blouse, makeup and clip-on earrings to collect the money intended for his late mother, Graziella Dall’Oglio, according to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Were she alive, the widow would be 85, though local authorities ultimately discovered what they believe to be her mummified body in her son’s home. An investigation is underway to officially confirm the identity of the corpse, as well as how long it had been there. Authorities believe it had likely been several years.

The scam was reportedly uncovered earlier this month when the accused conman was unable to fool an employee at the Borgo Virgilio registry office, where he arrived in disguise to update Dall’Oglio’s identity card, according to a translation of Corriere della Sera’s report.

The ID card was last updated 10 years ago, which happens to be “the last time the woman was seen,” Mayor Francesco Aporti told the outlet.

The “lady … looked a lot like the one in the document photo. But there was something that didn’t convince the employee, like the hair on her neck, the heavy makeup and it seemed to her that the holes of the beard were sprouting from the wax,” Aporti said.

The registry office employee wasn’t buying what the nurse was selling, in part due to his hands looking younger than that of an elderly woman, and reportedly flagged the man for their bosses. They then sounded the alarm for local authorities, prompting the comparison of the 10-year-old ID card and the new one.

“They isolated the images from the video surveillance camera and saw that the woman arrived in the car. Alarm: the lady does not have a driver’s license,” Aporti explained. “Then they did other investigations and, piece after piece, the picture of this bad story was outlined.”

Ultimately, the mayor and a plainclothes officer lured the son to the registry office under the guise of completing the renewal.

“He admitted to being the son,” Aporti said. “The agents asked him to do an inspection of his mother’s house and he agreed. They inspected the house and in one room, they found a mummified corpse.”

The son had allegedly been raking in around 53,000 euros a year (about $61,000) from his mother’s survivor pension, as well as income from the family’s investments in real estate and land.