Son claiming dead parents' pensions for over three decades caught when dad turned 100

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A son claimed his parents' pensions for over three decades and was only caught out when his dad turned 100. A court heard how Donal O'Callaghan, 58, spent 33 years claiming his dead parents' pension totalling £441,973, but was finally caught when his father became eligible for the centenary bounty cheque due to him turning 100.

O'Callaghan defrauded over half a million euros from his parents, Donald and Eileen, from 1987 all the way up to 2020 in one of the largest and longest running known cases of welfare fraud, The Mirror writes.Garda police officer Michael Nagle told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that the probe also revealed that Donald had claimed a pension for his dead wife from 1979 up until his own death in 1987.

It was not until his dad's supposed 100th birthday that the fraudulent scheme was rumbled.After speaking to Don, he tried to accept the financial reward, and the social welfare inspector then tried to verify Donald’s details, who was dead.She contacted the public health nurse, who had no record of Donald O' Callaghan.Unable to make contact with anybody else who could verify the information, in August 2020 the inspector spoke with Garda Nagle about the matter.In a bid to verify that Donald O'Callaghan was alive Garda Nagle contacted the public health nurse, home help services, local GPs and all of the main hospitals in the city.Donald O'Callaghan or Eileen O'Callaghan were not known to any of them and no death certificates could be located.Because of this, Garda Nagle started to carry out surveillance of the O'Callaghan home on the northside of the city.He told the court: "I eventually began to physically check various cemeteries over a number of weeks.“In September 2020 I located the grave of Eileen O'