NEW YORK (June 20) - A man accused of dressing up as his dead mother to collect her Social Security and rent subsidies is blaming the crime on an impersonator.
Thomas Parkin told the New York Post in a jailhouse interview that he wasn't the person captured on security cameras dressed in a wig and his mom's clothing.
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The newspaper said that during the 40-minute interview at Riker's Island, the 49-year-old also claimed his mother was once a B-movie star who dated Gene Kelly, and offered a rambling discourse on the psyche of Norman Bates, the cross-dressing killer in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."
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.
Parkin was charged Wednesday in an alleged 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.
District Attorney Charles Hynes said the scam was "unparalleled in its scope and brazenness."
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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 concealed 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.
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Parkin used his friend Rimolo to pose as the mother's nephew when going to cash checks and do other business, prosecutors said.
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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