The alerts went off quickly to the civil registry official. The person in front of me claimed to be an 85-year-old woman, but if you looked closely you detected certain details that didn’t fit. His voice, for example. It was too serious and from time to time it seemed to go down several tones. Lugo had the skin on her neck and hands, thick, smooth, very different from what one would expect to see on an almost nonagenarian woman. More than an old woman, he looked like a man in disguise.
The civil registry official was quickly alerted. So much so that he ended up notifying the police. And in doing so he uncovered a delusional scam that has cost Italy tens of thousands of euros and now has the country fascinated.
A lot of money, few scruples. That the imagination is sharpened when there are bills involved is nothing new. Just as it is not true that there are unscrupulous people willing to do all kinds of nonsense to pocket money that does not belong to them. Last year we told you the story of a Brazilian woman who appeared at a bank in Rio de Janeiro accompanied by the corpse of a man (supposedly “Uncle Paco”) to withdraw 3,000 euros in her name.
That case went around the world, but it is not much more bizarre than another that has just been aired in Italy. As happened in Brazil, there is a corpse and an attempted scam involved, although in this case the staging has been somewhat different. The reason? The alleged criminal did not take the dead man with him, but instead disguised himself as him to impersonate him before the city council.
The problem is that the alleged scammer was a 56-year-old man and the person his mother wanted to impersonate was a woman in her 90s.
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Who are you? The case has been told in detail by the newspaper Corriere della Sera. A few days ago, an employee of the civil registry in the town of Borgo Virgilia, in Mantua (Italy) found that a neighbor wanted to renew her expired ID. So far nothing out of the ordinary. The woman showed up by appointment and her papers were in order, but upon seeing her the official became suspicious.
The woman walked at a slow pace, wearing a skirt, jewelry, painted nails, and an exquisite layer of makeup that apparently tried to hide her wrinkles. In theory he was 85 years old. Or at least that’s what his license said. Her neck, however, was robust, her wrinkles were strange, and her hands had little to do with those of a frail, almost nonagenarian old woman. Not only that. Although she spoke like an older woman, from time to time her tone seemed to drift into deeper registers, registers more typical of an adult man, between 50 and 60 years old.
“Isolated from the rest of the world”. The mayor of Borgo Virgilia, Francesco Aporti, explains that this accumulation of details made the employee suspicious, who ended up alerting her bosses and the police. The first alert was raised when reviewing the security cameras and verifying that the supposed octogenarian had arrived at the wheel of a car, something strange considering that it did not appear that she had a driving license.
A more exhaustive search also revealed that the elderly woman had not been to the doctor or visited specialists for some time. Neither her nor her son. “It was as if they were isolated from the rest of the world,” says Aporti. There were signed documents and deeds of sale, but either they had been handled directly by his son as attorney-in-fact or they showed a signature that did not seem completely authentic.
And the cake was revealed. With all these indications, the authorities decided to set a trap for him. They called the old woman’s house to inform her that she had to return to the registry to complete her paperwork. They were not able to speak with her, but they did speak with her son, a 58-year-old man who assured them that he would notify his mother.
Shortly after, the woman went to the town hall, wearing makeup, a skirt and jewelry. On that occasion, however, she did not meet the official who issues ID cards, but rather a police officer who accompanied her to the police station. There the cake was revealed: during the interrogation, the supposed old woman recognized that he was actually her son, an almost 60-year-old nurse who was impersonating her.
A corpse in the closet. The next question is obvious: Why? To find out, the agents inspected the house where the old woman supposedly lived, where they found her mummified body in a closet.
The woman in question was called Graziella Dall’Oglio and everything indicates that she died in 2022 at the age of 82. Instead of notifying the death, the only child decided to keep it a secret, keep his mother’s body at home and continue collecting the pension religiously. As required CourierThanks to that income and the properties his family had, he managed to pocket around 53,000 euros a year.
“There were no known relatives. The woman’s husband, a doctor, had died, and the 58-year-old man was her only son. He worked as a nurse, but was unemployed. The last time the old woman was seen at City Hall was ten years ago, when she came to renew her old identity document,” explains the town’s mayor, who confirms that the police are investigating to clarify two points. First, confirm that the body they found in the closet is indeed Graziella’s. Second, that he died of natural causes.
A strange case? Strange yes. Uncommon, not so much. Although in this case the lack of scruples and daring of the protagonist stands out, it is not the first time that the Italian press talks about people who hide the death of a family member to continue collecting their pension. It happened in 2023 in Verona, where a man hid the death of his mother for five years, and in Apulia, where the police hunted a man who had been hiding his father’s body for nearly a decade.
Now the false octogenarian is denounced for crimes of concealment of a corpse, impersonation, fraud against Social Security and falsification of documents. As if that were not enough, his photo dressed as his mother is going around the world.
Images | X and Sterling Lanier (Unsplash)
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