fallin to an illusion
marika
via The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com by The Huffington Post News
Editors on 6/17/09
NEW YORK - Irene Prusik has been dead for six years. But in April, someone
showed up at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Brooklyn to renew her
driver's license.
The explanation given by prosecutors rivals the Hitchcock classic "Psycho":
It was her son, in drag.
Thomas Parkin, 49, was charged Wednesday in the bizarre plot to impersonate
his deceased mother so he could collect $117,000 in government benefits. He
and the man accused of being his accomplice, Mhilton Rimolo, pleaded not
guilty to grand larceny, criminal impersonation and other charges.
Both men were ordered held on $1 million bail. Their lawyers did not
immediately respond to phone messages left on Wednesday.
District Attorney Charles Hynes said the scam, first reported in the Daily
News, was "unparalleled in its scope and brazenness."
Authorities claim that following his arrest, Parkin told them that because
he held Prusik when she breathed her last breath, "I am my mother."
Parkin, who lived with his mother, was accused of hatching the scheme after
she passed away in 2003 at age 73. He managed to conceal the death by
falsifying her death certificate, then collected $52,000 from her
$700-a-month Social Security checks over the next six years, prosecutors
said.
Authorities say Parkin also got another $65,000 in rent subsidies by falsely
claiming he had a disability and that his mother was still alive and was his
landlord.
Parkin used his friend Rimolo to pose as the mother's nephew when going to
cash checks and do other business, prosecutors said. A security camera photo
from the DMV office shows a frail-looking Parkin in a wig and dark glasses,
Rimolo by his side, as he fills out paperwork.
The ruse began to unravel amid a dispute over the mother's home, which was
sold at foreclosure in 2003. Parkin challenged the purchase by suing the new
owner on his mother's behalf so he wouldn't be evicted.
As the property dispute dragged out, both sides eventually contacted the
district attorney to accuse each other of fraud. By the time investigators
arranged a meeting with the family in May, they already had proof Prusik was
dead: a photo of her tombstone in a local cemetery.
The investigators played along as Parkin showed up for the interview
"wearing a red cardigan, lipstick, manicured nails and breathing through an
oxygen tank," prosecutors said.
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