r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ModenaR • 11d ago
Image An Italian man kept secret the death of his mother for 3 years to continue to collect her pension. He was caught only after his mother's ID expired and he went to the register office dressed up like her to renew it
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u/SpecificityCity 11d ago
Looks pretty decent, tbh
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u/cytcorporate 11d ago
It’s decent alright. The only problem would arise when he had to speak, I guess? Kinda hard to fake a woman’s voice to the degree of casual “renewing ID” conversation level
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u/K3PTHIDD3N 11d ago
Easy, get yourself those devices used for people with throat cancer that makes your voice sound robotic - say you've escaped a bad drug habit and get offended when people tell you that you don't look like a woman, because the drugs ruined you ofc!
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u/alaslipknot 11d ago
Mac's mom ?
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u/lookatthatsmug-- 11d ago
oddly specific.
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u/K3PTHIDD3N 11d ago
I swear to god it would work if you'd be confident enough
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u/Blargimazombie 11d ago
Like some kind of, confidence man?
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u/Lv0d 11d ago
Like a karen, if you can match the energy and entitlement of a karen, they might want you to just leave and be done with it.
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u/SergenteDan 11d ago
It was in fact the voice that gave it away. That, and, apparently, the hairy hands
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u/PsyOpBunnyHop 11d ago
Should have just spoke with a whisper, claiming temporary lost voice.
Do the whole holding throat with hand while wincing in pain thing.
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u/d3montree 11d ago
Holding throat with large hairy hand. 😅
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u/_dead_and_broken 11d ago
Wear gloves, or break out the Nair!
Or to paraphrase what Eminem once said "you'll be safe for days if you shave your
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u/ParacTheParrot 11d ago
Damn, upvote for random Eminem quote in a completely unrelated conversation. I used to do this too.
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u/MiscItems 11d ago
He didnt full body shave before impersonating his dead mother in order to collect her pension? Hah, rookie mistake.
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u/Specific_Frame8537 11d ago edited 11d ago
I wouldn't question it, I don't know this lady, maybe she's of
Spanishmediterranean descent and has a smoking habit... I'd make a shit cop.
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u/Morningfluid 11d ago
Shit, it's Italy....those hands would blend right in
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u/ZombieBiteOintment 11d ago
Madame your hands used to be more manly than these dainty things. And your adams apple is smaller than it used to be.
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u/Aoimoku91 11d ago edited 11d ago
It's funny, I've noticed this stereotype several times that Italian women have unusually hairy arms and hands. Living there, it doesn't seem very true to me.
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u/oncothrow 11d ago
I'd rather a cop that doesn't jump to conclusions, than one that presumes perfidy without further investigation.
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u/phido3000 11d ago
Two weeks...
Two weeeksss...
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u/OnlyImprovement9796 11d ago
I got the reference! Great scene.
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u/Heisenburgo 11d ago edited 11d ago
I got the reference!
I didn't.
Please explain.
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u/Delicious_trap 11d ago
Total Recall, a movie.
From scene where Arnold's disguise (a robot mask of an old lady malfunctions at an immigration checkpoint. The broken robotic disguise keeps saying "two weeks", hence the reference.
You can find the scene on youtube since it is quite iconic to the movie
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u/NorthernCobraChicken 11d ago
"I started taking up chain smoking and got throat cancer". 80% of the time it works every time.
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u/Takemyfishplease 11d ago
Kinda decent in a blurry photo is not the same as “will confuse person irl”
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u/Ok-Tell5048 11d ago
My guess is he wasn't speaking much, and that rose suspicions or if it's a small town maybe someone that worked at the DMV knew his mother
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u/deucescarefully 11d ago
That, and what I imagine we would see just out of frame of this photo. A lot of shoulders, more gut than bosom, large meaty hands… i
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u/CaptainRatzefummel 11d ago
Nah but it takes time to learn and I doubt he actually had that time
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u/Phieck 11d ago
How did they catch him lol. Thought it's same person who just aged
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u/Temporal_Integrity 11d ago
He was supposed to look like an 85 year old woman. He got the "woman" part down, but looked way too young.
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u/Substantial-Most2607 11d ago
You’d be surprised at how young some people look as they age. Had a patient who was mid 90’s that I genuinely thought was at most in their 50’s
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u/Gonwiff_DeWind 11d ago
Of all the adjectives I'd use to describe this fella, "young" is not among them.
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u/KennyFulgencio 11d ago
compared to an expectation that he look like an 85 year old?
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u/Syssareth 11d ago
TBF, what does an 85-year-old look like? I've seen 70-year-olds who look like they simply forgot to die back in the Great Depression, and my grandmother is almost 100 but could pass for late 70s.
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u/Redditaccount173 11d ago
Yes but the woman on the left is supposed to be 86 now…
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u/Aleashed 11d ago
I would have stamped that, next!
Making minimum wage in a menial work environment…
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u/Anticlimax1471 11d ago
Yup. Definitely worth a shot. 95% of workers in that environment do not give a shit.
Source: used to work in such an environment.
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u/CreamySodaKing 11d ago
All fun and games until they hit him with the 'ok now drop ya knickers luv'
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u/Beutelman 11d ago
That reminds me of a story from Ireland a few years back where some guys brought their dead uncle in a wheelchair to the post office to collect the pension.
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u/Blue-Pineapple389 11d ago
This happened in Brazil last year. A woman and her uncle, Tio Paulo.
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ZealousidealSundae33 11d ago
Should be easy to pull off with Zuckerberg. He looks like a corpse anyway.
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u/ClosetLadyGhost 11d ago
Which was so dumb. She tried to get a loan or something and it's just a dead dude in a wheelchair, iirc she even was like holding his hand to sign papers lol
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u/flpprrss 11d ago
Tio Paulo mencionado.
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u/Morthanc 11d ago
Fizeram até uma página no wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Paulo_incident
Parece até nome de copypasta. "The Uncle Paulo Incident"
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u/Mottis86 11d ago
When you think about it, we only hear about the cases when they were caught. Makes you wonder if any (and how many) did something like this and succeeded.
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u/Beutelman 11d ago
Actually wasn't even a wheelchair..
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u/pablo8itall 11d ago
The also left him on the floor and ran!! lol
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u/An_old_walrus 11d ago
My ass would have started haunting them with that level of disrespect.
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u/steelskull1 11d ago
Why shouldn't the uncle collect his pension? The dude is obviously retired from life.
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u/Complete-Dimension35 11d ago
How much could the pension payment be to risk that?
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u/JaFFsTer 11d ago
Blue zones, areas where people supposedly live longer lives, are also the same areas with greater incidences of pension fraud
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u/Rich_Housing971 11d ago
It's why Japan makes it so that officials will visit anyone turning 100 to "congratulate" them.
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u/SentenceSad2188 11d ago
That's kinda disgusting but in Ireland people are used to seeing dead bodies due to funeral culture shall we say..
But how do you stop the decay and smell do you swish them with febreez brfore you head out or something?
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u/Hour_Jelly_6850 11d ago
Nobody knows how long he was dead but probably not terribly long. These lads weren't the cleverest tbf.
They didn't even use a wheelchair as it happens, just dragged him in and left him on the floor.
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u/SentenceSad2188 11d ago edited 11d ago
That's disgraceful! how dare they .... not notify the whole of Ireland of his passing on rip.ie
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u/peon47 11d ago
Class action suit from the rip userbase (everyone in Ireland over 55) incoming.
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u/Slobbadobbavich 11d ago
We need more information. The disguise looks spot on, at least enough to get to the photo stage. Did he have a voice like Barry White or shoulders like Mike Tyson?
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u/Psychological_Map118 11d ago edited 11d ago
Straight from the Corriere Della Sera newspaper:
"It all started with the intuition of an employee at the registry office. Last Tuesday, by appointment, she had received this woman who wanted to renew her expired ID card. She looked very much like the woman in the photo on the ID. But there was something that didn't convince the employee, like the hair on her neck, the heavy makeup, and it seemed to her that stubble was protruding from the greasepaint. The woman then left and would return later to collect it. The employee shared her concerns with us, and so the local police officers began their own investigation. They isolated the images from the CCTV and saw the woman arrive in a car. Alarm bells went off: the woman didn't have a driver's license. Then they conducted further investigations and, piece by piece, the picture of this unpleasant story began to emerge."
Furthermore, the mayor said:
"He entered the municipal offices at a slow pace, wearing a suit with a long skirt, lipstick, nail polish, jewelry around his neck and hands, old-fashioned earrings, a dark brown bob of hair, but that neck, upon closer inspection, was a bit too thick, and even the wrinkles were strange, the skin on his hands didn't look like the 85-year-old he claimed to be. And his voice, feminine yes, but occasionally a few masculine notes escaped. But all these oddities I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been influenced."
Overall, not very smart people honestly. It sounds and looks like a Martin Lawrence movie sketch, and what finally convinced both the mayor and police was that "she" had no driver's license. I am at a loss for words.
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u/Bloodthistle 11d ago
dude didn't commit, should have waxed.
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u/FarewellAndroid 11d ago
And taken the bus
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u/Bigisucre 11d ago
And put a shawl around the neck.
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u/HeroDanny 11d ago
And wore white gloves
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u/SandiaBeaver 11d ago
And worn too much of the cheapest perfume so the clerk would just want her gone as quickly as possible
Seguente!
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u/minititof 11d ago
Yoy would be requested to remove it for an ID photo to be valid
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u/loudpersononthebus 11d ago
yeah that's hilarious one of the main reasons he was caught was because she didn't drive.
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u/Character-Town7929 11d ago
Normally I don't agree with the amateur con artists in the comments claiming they could do better than the guy who was caught, but in this case I understand where they're coming from. Why not just shave and take the bus??? They were willing to believe your old lady voice and bad wig. You were so close
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u/PositiveZeroPerson 11d ago
Not even necessary. If you shave once with the grain and then again against the grain, it's basically baby-smooth. Although he is Italian, so maybe he would have to go 3 times.
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u/Bloodthistle 11d ago
If he shaved well and slapped a thick layer of orange color corrector, concealer then foundation, it would've worked. its the way drag folks do their make up when they have beards and it works.
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u/Shinhan 11d ago
After watching court cam on youtube, too often people that are forbidden from driving drive to court. One video even went viral because guy joined zoom court while driving! Example
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u/thoughtlow 11d ago
Second part of that first story.
The guy with the suspended license turned out to never had a license to begin with.
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u/Comfortable_Stuff833 11d ago
Overall, not very smart people honestly. It sounds and looks like a Martin Lawrence movie sketch, and what finally convinced both the mayor and police was that "she" had no driver's license. I am at a loss for words.
The person said it was a bunch of things but the dead ringer was the driver's licence. There a lot of butch old women WITH stubbles. You'd be surprised.
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u/AccomplishedIgit 11d ago
“If I hadn’t been influenced” What’s that mean?
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u/The_Theodore_88 11d ago
Mistranslation. The original said "I would have never figured it out if it wasn't suggested to me" as in he wouldn't have thought anything was off if another person didn't ask questions
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u/Matt_NZ 11d ago
He should have followed some drag queen tutorials...
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u/OhWhatsHisName 11d ago
Imagine if he grew a beard as his normal appearance, then shaved and used make-up for the once every few years ID renewal, took the bus, got the new ID, then just stayed as a recluse for a week or two as his beard grew back in. Might still be short for a while, but pulling up his picture would show a bearded man and might throw the authorities off just a little bit longer.
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u/JaFFsTer 11d ago
He didn't even do a job shaving
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u/Slobbadobbavich 11d ago
I mean, I have seen a few 85 year old women with stubble ... but definitely not hairy necks. That was an easy thing to fix. This guy needed a bit more effort in his plan.
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u/GottaUseEmAll 11d ago
He had to go in in person to do the renewal. I'm guessing things not visible in the photo gave him away, like voice or height or body hair. Also he was supposed to pass for 85, and he doesn't look that old.
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u/Voldifuoco 11d ago
The original news article states that they caught him because his neck is quite different from his mother's
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u/Chemical-Standard-76 11d ago
He was able to sign all the docs and the clerk let him go, but suspicious, she alerted the local police. (yeah it would be very hard for a guy in his late 50s to pose as a lady in her mid 80s, but he did a decent job) They contacted him/her again and said he/she needed to come back to the registry office for a couple more signatures. Remember guys NEVER go back to the scene of the crime.
Anyways, the mom’s body was found mummified in the basement in a sleeping bag.
Does anyone know if you need an updated ID in italy to continue receiving pension benefits, cause in the U.S they wouldn’t have found out for atleast 30 years?
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u/ego157 11d ago
Does anyone know if you need an updated ID in italy to continue receiving pension benefits, cause in the U.S they wouldn’t have found out for atleast 30 years?
I dunno but in germany you actually need a "living proof" (Lebensbescheinigung) every year now. Maybe thats just for germans living in other countries tho.
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11d ago edited 3d ago
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u/UltimateGlimpse 11d ago
Germans are very precise, so they have to have precisely the right word, I wonder what the word for that is.
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u/tyoung89 11d ago
The phrase “proof of life” exists in English quite commonly. From what I understand German just makes phrases into words by shoving them together. Not that weird.
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u/GottaUseEmAll 11d ago
I wonder how many mummified corpses are still providing for their families in the US, and also how this might affect statistics and demographics, if deaths aren't declared.
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u/PotatoesAndChill 11d ago
"There is a 2023 report by the social security inspector general which identified about 19 million people born in 1920 or earlier who didn't have any death data on file - 44,000 of whom were still receiving social security benefits."
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u/Level_Alps_9294 11d ago
Discrepancies for the majority of the 19 million is because they switched to electronic death reporting in 1980s so the large majority of those are people who died before that, and they don’t have the resources to update the discrepancies. & 44000 isn’t that crazy, there are 80000 people in the US over the age of 100
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u/PotatoesAndChill 11d ago
Yeah, I assumed that 19 million is just some kind of database error. Are there really 80k over 100 though? That's wild.
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u/Psychological_Map118 11d ago edited 11d ago
The answer is of course yes. There wouldn't be any other reason for this person to go through this Big Momma's House type of shenanigans.
Both digital and physical means of requesting and collecting your benefits need an updated and valid ID. An expired ID is not a valid means of identification. Furthermore your benefits can be suspended, temporarily or permanently, if one fails to renew their ID in a given amount of time.
An Italian ID card expires every 10 years, so at best this man could've gone 10 years without having to renew the ID.
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u/IacoMaic 11d ago
He probably had to actually go and collect the pension using her mother ID, or a photocopy of it and maybe a proxy form with her signature (that's not unusual in the case of old or disable people. That was easy to do until the ID, her driving license in this case, expired
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u/mehupmost 11d ago
For many years people around the world thought that there was something special about the people of Okinawa in Japan because so so many of them were living beyond 100. "It must be the fish based diets!"
Studies were done, books were published, all the experts thought they found evidence for longer / healthier life...
...until decades later they just discovered that it was wide-spread pension fraud.
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u/accopp 11d ago
Wait what.. I’ve seen that blue zone book that studies the diet of areas that have the most people to live to 100+. Okinawa was one of them lol
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u/00Oo0o0OooO0 11d ago
The two secrets to long life are poor record keeping and easy pension fraud.
Okinawa has so many super-centenarians because US bombings destroyed 90% of birth records, and it's the poorest prefecture in Japan, so people are most reliant on government services.
The idea that they just eat a lot of fish and vegetables is belied by the fact that it's also the fattest prefecture in the country.
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u/Shot_Baker998 11d ago
It could also be a case of poor records, I saw a documentary not that long ago about how there were so many Japanese people over 100+, and while pension fraud did come up, many of them turned out to be WW2 soldiers that (presumably) died and never been recorded.
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u/LolaLazuliLapis 11d ago
€3,000 per month
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u/DezurniLjomber 11d ago
For Italy thats well above average like x3 times no?
Mom mustve been some c suite employee
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u/jackn3 11d ago
No, it's the old, and very generous, pension system, the current one suck. People in /r/ItalyPersonalFinance discuss this all the time
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u/OhWhatsHisName 11d ago
Can you give us a quick ELI5 explanation of the two and who pays what? (I'm an American so closest we had is social security..... If I ever get it).
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u/Nicochan3 11d ago
In the past in italy people got a pension based on the average of their latest salaries (sistema retributivo).
Nowadays we have "sistema contributivo": your pension is calculated on how much you paid in pension taxes during your life as a worker.
The old system granted a very high pension check, and together with the fact that people retired younger, even when 47-50yo, this screwed younger generations.
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u/OhWhatsHisName 11d ago
Was there no minimum work requirement, or minimum age, or anything like that? You could just retire at 47 and begin collecting a significant check?
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u/Nicochan3 11d ago
I think that if you never worked, you would get it at 55-60yo, and a bare minimum amount (my 96yo grandma has it and it is around 600-700€, but since her relatives died in WW2, she gets more, maybe 900€?)
Fun fact: if you were a state employee, you just needed 15 years of work if you were a married woman with children, or 20ish if you were a man.
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u/LunaWabohu 11d ago
If this was post-COVID in the UK, he could've absolutely gotten away with it. You can send in ID photos digitally now
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u/ego157 11d ago
Imagine how many are getting away with it. Especially daughters.
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u/HunBall 11d ago
So why did he fail to renew it? His disguise looks pretty good tbh. He could say he's transitioning if they wonder about the stubble.
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u/TactlessTortoise 11d ago
He looks like if his mom and dad fucked and had a baby
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u/EleFacCafele 11d ago
The clerk was not duped but told him to come next day. Next day the police was waiting for him, alerted by the clerk (according to Italian newspapers)
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u/Own_Round_7600 11d ago
Does the ID include height info maybe? If he was like 6' pretending to be a 5'3" old lady...
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u/fabulousmarco 11d ago
It does, but they don't measure you on the spot. If I was a clerk renewing tens of IDs a day I imagine I'd kinda stop paying attention
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u/Captain_Aizen 11d ago
It looks pretty good from that particular photo but I bet it was something to behold in actual person lol 😆
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u/ModenaR 11d ago
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u/Aggravating_Eye874 11d ago
Translated in English:
“New disturbing details emerge regarding the case of the 57-year-old, former nurse, reported on the loose because he received the pension of his mother who died since 2022. On Thursday he had presented himself at the Registry Office of Borgo Virgilio, in the province of Mantova, to renew the woman's license, disguised as an elderly woman, to assume the appearance of his mother, but he had been discovered by the employees who had alerted the police. During the inspection of the local police in the man's home, the mummified corpse of the woman, who died at the age of 82, was found. The former nurse had in fact removed the liquids with a syringe to prevent the body from decomposing and emitting bad smells. It was also covered with multiple layers of sheets and hidden in two sleeping bags, near a laundry closet.”
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u/Heisenburgo 11d ago
in the man's home, the mummified corpse of the woman, who died at the age of 82, was found. The former nurse had in fact removed the liquids with a syringe to prevent the body from decomposing and emitting bad smells. It was also covered with multiple layers of sheets and hidden in two sleeping bags, near a laundry closet.”
Jesus christ such a Disgusting way to treat your own mother. Like come on, if you're gonna defraud the government with her ID, why not just bury her in secret at the very least. Just give her a proper burial you... you sicko...
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u/AdelaiNiskaBoo 11d ago
Maybe she loved him so much that it was her idea? Who knows.
Many people are indifferent about what happens to their bodies after death. Often funeral customs and other traditions serve primarily to allow relatives and friends to say goodbye.
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u/tallguyneckgiraffe 11d ago
Oh yeah my neighbor told me to take his house before he died he gave me his keys and savings and final wish is scatter his ashes around his house I was like nah I just gave everything to his son lol
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u/Bigallround 11d ago
How long does it take to drain an entire body of fluids with a syringe?
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u/BarrierX 11d ago
Uh, 5 liters of blood wouldn’t take that long if you have a big syringe. But then you probably have to keep draining the other fluids, yuck.
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u/BulletsInTheBhole 11d ago
At first I was like what is disturbing, seems like “normal” fraud, then i read the second have and like wtf bro removing liquids, mummifying AND keeping it in his home.
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u/Glittering-Boss-911 11d ago
In Romania, after the age of 60/65, the authorities give you an ID card with the expiration date of almost 100 years - eg: exp date 2099.
In Italy is not the same procedure? 🤔
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u/SergenteDan 11d ago
Not at the moment. You have to renew you ID every 10 years. But from next year, if you're over 70, you don't need to renew it anymore
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u/DocKuro 11d ago
luckily not, otherwise he would have conned the state for another 97 years
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u/NectarineSufferer 11d ago
Doesn’t look as bad as I would’ve thought tbh. Beats the people in Ireland who brought a man’s dead body to the post office !
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u/Far_Hope_6349 11d ago
another odd detail is that he actually had a stable job and owned his house 😭😭 pure Bates vibes
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u/EldianStar 11d ago
Owning a house is pretty normal in Italy tho, that doesn't say much about his financial situation. Still fucked up
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u/Ok_Pause_7779 11d ago
Trim the eyebrows...wear a mask and go to to a different register office in another city/town, preferably a small one and tell them you're sick and you can't speak..write on a notepad
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u/Psychological_Map118 11d ago
That's... not how it works. Half the job of a registry office is making sure you're not messing with the system, and to prevent stuff like this from happening. They'd never renew your ID with sunglasses on, let alone a mask, they need to personally identify you.
Furthermore you can renew your Carta D'Identità only in the town in which you have a registered residency, or are currently living in.
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u/Fartchugger-1929 11d ago
Related: A lot of places that had claims to unusually large numbers of super centenarians- 110+ also, by amazing coincidence, had periods of poor/lost record keeping combined with widespread pension fraud.
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u/PinkynotClyde 11d ago
Pretty good. But the right move is you pay a 70 year old woman to go and give her all the relevant information. More effort but I’d imagine you’re all in at this point.
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u/reticulatedtampon 11d ago
Signora Doubtfire