Man puts on dead mother’s lipstick and jewelry to collect pension

A man in Italy kept his mother’s mummified body in his house after her death and earned her pension every month for three years. The fraud was caught when he disguised himself as his mother in her clothes for an ID renewal, leading police to find her mummified remains in his basement, according to Corriere della Sera.

The 57-year-old had been successfully collecting his mother, Graziella Dall’Oglio’s, pension, and his scheme had earned him nearly £50,000 in total.

According to the police, he kept her body in the cellar of her home, in the commune of Borgo Virgilio in Lombardy, Italy, without reporting her death.

However, he was compelled to get into his mother’s clothes when her identity card expired. The son showed up at the commune’s registry office wearing a woman’s dress, wig, lipstick, and jewelry to try to fool civil servants.

Officials immediately grew suspicious and launched their own investigation, which allegedly uncovered years of fraud perpetrated using the deceased woman’s identity.

Francesco Aporti, the village’s mayor, told Corriere della Sera, “The employee shared her doubts with us, and the local police, who were conducting their own investigation, got to work. They isolated the images from the surveillance cameras and saw that the woman had arrived by car.”

“Alarm bells rang when it was discovered that the woman did not have a driver’s license. As investigations progressed, piece by piece, a troubling story began to unfold. They then asked the ‘mother’ to return to the office, where police officers and the mayor were waiting for him.”

Mr. Aporti noted, “She entered the municipal offices at a slow pace, wearing a suit with a long skirt. She had lipstick on her lips, nail polish on her hands, and jewelry around her neck and wrists, along with old-style earrings and dark brown hair.”

However, upon closer inspection, her neck appeared unusually large, and the wrinkles on her skin seemed peculiar. The skin on her hands did not match that of an 85-year-old, as she claimed.

“And the voice, feminine, yes, but now and then he missed some male notes,” he added.

He admitted to being the son and allowed officers to search his mother’s home, where they uncovered a mummified body in one room.

Following the discovery of his fraud, police requested permission to search his home, a request he granted. During the search, officers located a mummified body. The mayor commented on the bizarre and tragic nature of the find, noting, “She probably died of natural causes, but the postmortem will establish that.”

According to the initial investigation, she passed away from natural causes in 2022, and her body was taken to the mortuary for examination.

Further investigations are now focused on the son, who may face charges related to hiding a corpse and fraud.