AN unemployed Italian man has been accused of dressing up as his dead mother to fraudulently claim her pension.
The 56-year-old man successfully pocketed thousands in pension payments before he was eventually exposed.
To make matters worse his mother, Graziella Dall’Oglio, died three years earlier at the age of 82.
When she passed away, her son did not report her death.
Instead he wrapped her body in a bed sheet, stuffed it in a sleeping bag and hid it away in his house.
The unemployed nurse from Mantua kept her decaying corpse for so long that it eventually became mummified.
Realising that in order to claim her pension he would need to modify his appearance, he underwent a “Mrs Doubtfire-style transformation,” cutting his hair in a similar style to his mother.
He then applied foundation and lipstick, and put on her pearl necklace and clip earrings.
Arriving at a government agency in town in the hope of renewing his mother’s identity card that had expired a few months earlier, it wasn’t long before he raised the suspicions of someone who worked there.
Realising something was wrong, the employee alerted the police and the local mayor.
The authorities then compared photos taken of the mother and her son.
It was only then that they realised they had been deceived.
To lure him out, the police summoned his mother to the town hall once again, except this time he was met by police officers.
Following this discovery, the police 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 his deception was revealed, the police told him they needed to inspect his home.
“He agreed to that. 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 postmortem.
“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.
The corpse was then taken to the mortuary of a local hospital for a postmortem to be conduced.
It is estimated that the son had an annual income of €53,000 (£47,000) thanks to a combination of his mother’s pension payments and a portfolio of three houses.
The man is now under investigation for illegally concealing a body and benefit fraud.
