The mother of all frauds – could it happen here?

Remember 1960s movie Psycho? Mild mannered Norman Bates (played by Antony Perkins) has a profound dress-up moment imitating his dead mother, resulting in a frightening finale.

There was no financial strategy or benefit behind Norman’s psychotic behaviour but in the northern Italian city of Mantua, a 56-year-old man allegedly claimed thousands of euros in pension payments by impersonating his mother who died three years previously. 

Instead of reporting his mother’s death, the son allegedly hid her body in his home and dressed up as her – wearing a wig, makeup, jewellery, and women’s clothing – so he could claim her pension. 

He got away with it until early November, when he entered the local council office to renew his mother’s ID card and was confronted by police who had been alerted by a suspicious staff member. 

Media reports say the man had “shuffled” into the council office dressed as an old woman, wearing lipstick, nail polish, jewellery, old-fashioned earrings, and a dark brown hair bob. 

He tried to imitate a female voice, “but occasionally a few masculine notes slipped out”, according to the staff member, who also noted that the man’s neck “was a bit too thick and even the wrinkles were strange, and the skin on his hands did not seem to be that of an 85-year-old woman”. 

Authorities then compared an official photo of the deceased woman with that of her son. Upon inspecting the man’s home, police reportedly found the mother’s body hidden in the laundry. 

The son is an unemployed nurse who, thanks to his mother’s pension and ownership of three properties, had an annual income of €53,000 (about A$94,000). 

The Guardian reports that it’s not the first time the body of a dead pensioner has been concealed by their offspring to claim their benefits. 

In 2023, it was discovered that a man in Verona kept his mother’s body at home for five years while he claimed her pension. 

A similar discovery was made the same year in a town in Puglia: in that case, a son had managed to hide his father’s body at home for 10 years.