Greed led an Italian man to strange extremes when he tried to impersonate his late mother to collect her pension for three years, while her embalmed body was kept in the basement of his home. According to the Corriere della Sera, the 57-year-old man had been successfully collecting his mother's pension for three years after her death, keeping her body in the basement of his home in Borgo Virgilio, Lombardy, without reporting her death. However, he was forced to dress in her clothes when her identity card expired. The man went to the town hall wearing a dress, a wig, lipstick, and jewelry in an attempt to fool civil servants. Officials immediately became suspicious and began their own investigation, uncovering what they suspect are years of fraud using the identity of a woman who could not be traced. The incident caused shock in the small town of Borgo Virgilio, where Mayor Francesco Aborti stated: "A employee alerted us to her suspicions, and the local police, who were already conducting their own investigation, began to act." Aborti added: "The man entered the town hall offices slowly, wearing a suit and a long skirt, with lipstick, nail polish, jewelry on his neck and hands, old-fashioned earrings, and a dark brown wig. But upon close inspection, his neck was too large, and the wrinkles were strange too. The skin on his hands did not resemble that of an 85-year-old man he claimed to be. His voice was feminine, yes, but he sometimes skipped some masculine tones." The man then admitted that he was the son and allowed officers to search his mother's house, where they found an embalmed body in one of the rooms. Preliminary investigations indicate that she died of natural causes in 2022, and her body has been transferred to the morgue for an examination. The son is now undergoing further investigation and may face charges of concealing a body and fraud.
