[SPEAKER_04]: One of the most fascinating things about cons is that not all of them are executed by professional con artists, sometimes with some cons an incredible opportunity will suddenly present itself to a regular law-biting person who's never scammed anyone for anything ever.
[SPEAKER_04]: But overnight, they'll start scamming.
[SPEAKER_04]: usually justifying it by thinking to themselves, they're not hurting anyone, and they'll never get caught, so who's gonna know?
[SPEAKER_04]: I have this friend here in Los Angeles, who at the height of the pandemic.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a number of coronavirus cases, sores above 3,000.
[SPEAKER_04]: when everyone started working remotely.
[SPEAKER_04]: He got a second job, but he didn't tell his first job because they would have fired him for that kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, he got a third job.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's been working full-time at all three jobs for years now.
[SPEAKER_04]: And each of his employers do not know about the other.
[SPEAKER_04]: keep in mind, he's making more than $40,000 a month, and working those three jobs, all at the same time, has enabled him to finally buy a house for himself and his growing family here in Los Angeles, where the median price of a home is upwards of a million dollars.
[SPEAKER_04]: So technically, this is a scam, because if any one of those employers found out about the other, they'd all fire him immediately.
[SPEAKER_04]: But who's he hurting?
[SPEAKER_04]: He's getting his work done at all three jobs, and he keeps racking up glowing employment reviews.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's not breaking any criminal law.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, he's violating the employment agreements.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's signed with each of those three companies that hired him, but he is most certainly not a professional economist.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's just a regular guy who saw an opportunity to triple his income without hurting anyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the subject of this episode of Hardcore Khan, regular people who suddenly start doing irregular things when seemingly harmless opportunities to scam appear out of nowhere.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Hardcore Khan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Episode three, dead money.
[SPEAKER_04]: Picture it, northern Italy, one of the most beautiful places in existence, rolling lush green fields, peppered with old-world homes that are literally hundreds and hundreds of years old, scattered in no particular pattern all over the mountainous Italian countryside.
[SPEAKER_04]: Their terracotta roofs glistening in the midday sun.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's 2022 now, in Lombardi, Italy, just a couple hours west of Milan, and 54-year-old Giuseppe D'Alegilio is sitting in his mother's home.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cryon uncontrollably.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because his mother, Grasiela D'Alegilio, is lying dead in her bed.
[SPEAKER_04]: and Giuseppe, just discovered her body after coming home from the grocery store.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe's been living with his mother for the past few years after losing his job as a nurse at the local hospital.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's when he decided to move in and live with his mother full-time.
[SPEAKER_04]: She passed away at 82 years old, of seemingly natural causes.
[SPEAKER_04]: But still, Giuseppe is understandably heartbroken.
[SPEAKER_04]: His father, who was the town doctor, died years earlier.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now, Giuseppe feels like an orphan.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, he's 54 years old, but still, with both his parents gone, the loneliness, then isolation, consumes him.
[SPEAKER_04]: At some point, he climbs into bed with the corpse of his dead mother, and wraps his arms around her, then kisses her on the cheek.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her skin is ice cold, a reminder that the mother he knew and loved is no longer there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe saws uncontrollably as he says his last goodbye.
[SPEAKER_04]: hours pass, and Giuseppe gets up from his mother's bed and walks into the living room.
[SPEAKER_04]: The silence in that house is now deafening, so Giuseppe turns on the TV.
[SPEAKER_02]: As the sounds of an Italian soap opera pervade the stifling air, Giuseppe sits down on the couch and starts thinking.
[SPEAKER_05]: What now, what now, what now?
[SPEAKER_04]: He suddenly panics and his heart starts racing.
[SPEAKER_04]: When he realizes, he's in major trouble, major financial trouble.
[SPEAKER_04]: Remember, just set these unemployed, he hasn't collected a paycheck in years, and he's been living rent free and using his mother's pension for living expenses for him and his mother.
[SPEAKER_04]: That pension, $53,000 euros, which is about $60,000 a year, every year, will stop coming the second Giuseppe reports his mother's death to authorities.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe thinks to himself, does he even have to report his mother's death to the authorities?
[SPEAKER_04]: In a moment of
[SPEAKER_04]: Just happy decides not to say anything about his mother's death to anyone, and then suddenly
[SPEAKER_04]: which a seppy glances down at the caller ID.
[SPEAKER_04]: One of his mother's friends is calling.
[SPEAKER_04]: He nervously picks up the phone and says, hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Giuseppe.
[SPEAKER_00]: How is your mother doing today?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know she wasn't feeling well when I spoke to her yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her condition improved at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe tells the woman his mother is fine, she's still feeling under the weather, but she's resting now, and he doesn't want to wake her.
[SPEAKER_04]: The woman accepts that explanation and hangs up.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was easy Giuseppe thinks to himself, as he walks back into the kitchen and starts making dinner.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe eats dinner by himself, for the first time, for as far back as he can remember, he's sitting at the family dinner table alone.
[SPEAKER_04]: He finishes his meal and goes to bed, leaving his dirty dishes in the sink.
[SPEAKER_04]: Normally, his mother would raise hell about dirty dishes in the sink, but that will never happen again.
[SPEAKER_04]: But Giuseppe lies in bed that night, unable to fall asleep, while his mother laid dead in the next room.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe's mind is awash with worries and concerns.
[SPEAKER_04]: How the hell is he going to pull this off?
[SPEAKER_04]: on the upside that O Lady who called is one of the last of his mother's living friends.
[SPEAKER_04]: His mother was 82 years old when she died, and the vast majority of her contemporaries have already passed away.
[SPEAKER_04]: Besides, Giuseppe thinks to himself, he can actually impersonate his mother's voice over the phone.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's done it in the past as a joke, and he was very very convincing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that shouldn't be a problem, Giuseppe thinks, comforting himself as he drifts off to sleep.
[SPEAKER_04]: As the sun rises the next morning on a new day, a new problem Giuseppe has to solve, hit some straight in the face.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, actually, in the nose,
[SPEAKER_04]: you see, the science of death is inescapable.
[SPEAKER_04]: When someone dies, when their heart stops pumping blood, when all their cells stop repairing and replacing themselves on a minute by minute basis, their body starts to rapidly decompose, and the future its smell of death is as overwhelming as it is unmistakable.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's smell, that stench of death,
[SPEAKER_04]: Quickly fills the house, as the new day's sun heats up the dead woman's bedroom.
[SPEAKER_04]: Jacepi's got to act fast.
[SPEAKER_04]: What if the male man comes to the door?
[SPEAKER_04]: He'll surely know someone died Jacepi thinks to himself.
[SPEAKER_04]: What now?
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe there's a powerful air freshener he could buy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe he can continuously spray hand sanitizer or bleach on the body to mask the smell.
[SPEAKER_04]: The smell of Giuseppe's dead mother breaks his train of thought.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's getting worse.
[SPEAKER_04]: He needs to do something about it now.
[SPEAKER_04]: The good news is, Giuseppe worked as a nurse for decades, and over the course of all those years, he's built up an implacable tolerance to the sort of stuff that would gross most people out.
[SPEAKER_04]: vomit, human excrement, blood, you name it, Giuseppe's been hit in the face by it hundreds of times while working at the hospital.
[SPEAKER_04]: So to say that he wasn't squeamish, is a massive, massive, understatement.
[SPEAKER_04]: Such a seppy website is phone and Googles how to embom a human body.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's actually a lot easier than you would think, as long as you're not grossed out by blood and gore and moving a dead body.
[SPEAKER_04]: But Giuseppe grabs a bunch of giant syringes and a scalpel, and then makes a series of small incisions near his mother's neck, puncturing her carotid artery and then her jugular vein.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he cuts into his mother's thigh into her femoral artery.
[SPEAKER_04]: And little by little, Giuseppe drains every drop of blood and fluid from his mother's decomposing body.
[SPEAKER_04]: He then wraps her up using a bunch of sleeping bags and hides the body in a closet in the laundry room.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now that all the blood and fluids have been drained from his mother's dead body, it quickly dries up and mummifies, like an Egyptian ferro, and that futureed smell of death subsides and completely dissipates.
[SPEAKER_04]: As the days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months, Giuseppe appears to be getting away with it all.
[SPEAKER_04]: His mother's pension checks are hitting her account by direct deposit like clockwork every month, then Giuseppe has full access to that account, and he withdraws all the cash he needs to pay for food, and water, and electricity, and all of his other living expenses.
[SPEAKER_04]: At the one-year mark, Giuseppe files tax returns in his mother's name and forges her signature.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he does the same thing at the two-year mark.
[SPEAKER_04]: But by year three of this death-defying deception, it's 2025, and government record show his mother is now 85 years old, and her government ID is officially expired.
[SPEAKER_04]: She needs to renew it in person at the Clark's Office of the Commune they live in, Borgo, Virgilio, in northern Italy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe needs that new ID in his mother's name in order to keep receiving her pension checks every month.
[SPEAKER_04]: What now?
[SPEAKER_05]: You're high.
[SPEAKER_05]: Could you make me a woman?
[SPEAKER_04]: Have you ever seen that movie, Mrs. Doubtfire?
[UNKNOWN]: Boo!
[SPEAKER_04]: The Robin Williams loses custody of his kids, so he dresses up like a woman and secretly gets hired as an old English nanny so that he can be in his kids' lives.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, some parents win their angry.
[SPEAKER_06]: They get along much better when they don't live together.
[SPEAKER_06]: They don't fight all the time and they can become better people and much better mummies and daddies for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Giuseppe Dologelio decides to pull a Mrs. Doubtfire so that he can renew his mother's government ID in person in order to continue receiving her pension checks, $60,000 a year.
[SPEAKER_04]: Josephi opens his mother's closet, pulls out one of her signature blouses, matches it to one of her skirts, throws on one of her necklaces, a pair of her earrings, plaster's on her makeup and puts on her wig.
[SPEAKER_04]: He even douses himself with her expensive French perfume that she used to save for important events like weddings and funerals.
[SPEAKER_04]: As Giuseppe stands there in his mother's bedroom, looking at himself in a full-length mirror, he actually looks a lot like his mom, and he smells like her too, but will he be able to fool government officials?
[SPEAKER_04]: Giuseppe walks out of a house dressed like his mother, gets into his car, and
[SPEAKER_04]: and starts making his way to the town's registry office to renew the government issued ID of his now 85-year-old mother while dressed up like his 85-year-old mother who in reality died three years ago at 82.
[SPEAKER_04]: As Giuseppe Parks in front of the Municipal Office, he's confident he can pull this off.
[SPEAKER_04]: After all, he's been in personate his mother over the phone for three years now to all the people calling to check up on her.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he's got the voice down pad.
[SPEAKER_04]: Chasseppe grabs the rearview mirror to take one last look at himself to make sure his lipstick is flawless, his foundation is even, his wig is on straight.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he gets out of his car, walks across the parking lot, and into that registry office.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, I did some digging, and I was able to get my hands on the actual security footage of Giuseppe dressed up like his 85-year-old mother, walking across the parking lot and into that office to renew his mother's ID.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, in that same video, you see him right after, walking back to his car.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's truly something to behold.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm posting that incredible security cam video right now on my Instagram at Queen of
[SPEAKER_04]: In that same video, you can see Jacepi carrying his mother's purse and walking with a cane like any 85-year-old woman would.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm also posting the real side-by-side pictures of Jacepi dressed up like his mother, alongside a picture of his actual mother.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's on my Instagram too, at Queen of the Con.
[SPEAKER_04]: They look very similar, like sisters, but it's definitely not the same person.
[SPEAKER_04]: The second Giuseppe walks up to that clerk at the Registry Office dressed like his 85-year-old mother, the clerk is not fooled at all.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, she pretends like everything's fine, and she takes the paperwork Giuseppe submits, and sends him on his way, giving him the impression that he'll be receiving that new ID in his mother's name in a matter of days.
[SPEAKER_04]: But, in reality, as soon as Giuseppe walks out of that office, the clerk immediately reports him to the authorities, and they launch an investigation, and Giuseppe is eventually arrested and charged with concealing accorpes, fraud, and identity theft.
[SPEAKER_04]: The mayor of Giuseppe's town, a man named Francesco Aporty, gives a media interview about this case.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is certainly a story of profound loneliness.
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything else remains to be determined.
[SPEAKER_03]: The woman died of natural causes and she was 82 years old, so that's not surprising.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is surprising is that, financially, they were not in difficulty.
[SPEAKER_03]: three houses in some land.
[SPEAKER_03]: It is a very, very sad story.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the way the mayor tells it, just seppies charade in that registry office back in November of 2025, pretending to be his mother, was over the minute he walked in.
[SPEAKER_03]: It all started with the intuition of an employee at the registry office.
[SPEAKER_03]: She met with this woman who wanted to renew her expired identity card.
[SPEAKER_03]: She looked remarkably like the woman in the ID photo, but something didn't feel right to the employee.
[SPEAKER_03]: There were hairs on the neck, heavy makeup, and it seemed as though Bill Stubble was showing through the thick foundation.
[SPEAKER_03]: The woman left and was supposed to return later to collect the new ID.
[SPEAKER_03]: The employee shares their doubts with us, and our local police officers began investigating they reviewed surveillance camera footage and saw that the woman at the ride by car that immediately raised the red flag because the elderly woman didn't have a driver's license.
[SPEAKER_03]: From their piece by piece the entire disturbing story came together.
[SPEAKER_04]: And according to the mayor, they let Giuseppe leave that day unencumbered while they secretly began a sprawling investigation.
[SPEAKER_03]: We checked the National Health Service emergency room visit specialists appointments, records from the family doctor, the woman appeared nowhere and needed to their son.
[SPEAKER_03]: It was as though they had been completely isolated from the outside world.
[SPEAKER_03]: We also found signatures supposedly belonging to the woman on some building permit paperwork, but they didn't exactly match her authentic signature.
[SPEAKER_03]: We examined tax returns filed in her name and they had been submitted regularly every year.
[SPEAKER_03]: They reported an annual income of about $53,000, about $60,000 in American money, which complicated matters because it suggested normal activity.
[SPEAKER_03]: Finally, we spoke with neighbors and acquaintances, no one had seen the woman for years.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's all the evidence they needed to launch a sting operation.
[SPEAKER_04]: days later, the mayor working with local police set a trap for Giuseppe, tricking him into walking back into that same office dressed up as his mother.
[SPEAKER_03]: We told him that to complete the identification process, he needed to come to the local police headquarters across the street.
[SPEAKER_03]: During questioning there, he admitted that he was actually the woman's son.
[SPEAKER_03]: The officers then asked for permission to inspect his mother's home and he agreed.
[SPEAKER_03]: During the search they found a mummified body in one of the rooms.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Giuseppe is still in jail awaiting trial in Northern Italy.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the thing that really surprises me about this whole story is just how common it is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Especially here in the United States, where people who are not con artists suddenly start scamming when a relative dies and they see an opportunity to continue collecting money on that relative's behalf.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just last year, in 2025, in Minnesota, a 54-year-old woman was charged with collecting more than $360,000 in her deceased mother's name.
[SPEAKER_04]: Her mother died in 1999.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she dressed up like her mother, just like Chasseppe, albeit more convincingly.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she went into the Social Security office numerous times to make sure the payments kept
[SPEAKER_04]: And back in 2021, an Oregon man was convicted of collecting nearly half a million dollars in social security payments in the name of his deceased aunt who died 40 years earlier.
[SPEAKER_04]: the ant passed away in a nursing home and for some reason her death was never officially reported.
[SPEAKER_04]: So her social security checks just kept coming.
[SPEAKER_04]: And her nephew forged her signature and just kept depositing those checks into her account, which he had access to.
[SPEAKER_04]: This went on for 40 years.
[SPEAKER_04]: 40 years.
[SPEAKER_04]: By the time they busted the nephew, he was in his 70s and he had collected more than $460,000 in his aunts' name.
[SPEAKER_04]: Then get this.
[SPEAKER_04]: The only reason he was found out was because someone randomly had the Social Security Administration
[SPEAKER_04]: thought it was unusual that this guy's aunt who was 114 years old on paper is A still alive and B still collecting social security.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they started looking into it and they caught the nephew red handed depositing his dead aunt's social security checks.
[SPEAKER_04]: And listen, it's not just individuals getting in on this dead money scam.
[SPEAKER_04]: According to a recent associated press report, in just one year alone, Medicaid paid out more than $200 million to hundreds of health care providers across the country from medical treatments for dead people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yep, this dead money scam is happening on every single level.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey, can you all do me a favor if you're listening to this on Apple can you leave me a five-star review and mention what you liked about the series or this episode or me?
[SPEAKER_04]: If you didn't like this episode, why'd you listen all the way to the end?
[SPEAKER_04]: Come on!
[SPEAKER_04]: There are so many amazing podcasts out there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't waste time listening to stuff you don't like.
[SPEAKER_04]: Life is too short.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hardcore Khan was created written and hosted by me, Jonathan Walton, for Jonathan Walton Media, executive producer, Evan Goldstein.
[SPEAKER_04]: All editing and sound design was done by Jimmy O'Holigan.
[SPEAKER_04]: My book, Anatomy of a Con artist, the 14 Red Flags to spot scammer's crypters and thieves, is available everywhere books are sold, in print and audio, so it's like a podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: and both print and audio are also available for free at most public libraries throughout the country.
[SPEAKER_04]: And on the Libby app, God, I love the Libby app.
[SPEAKER_04]: Make sure you subscribe to Jonathan Walton Media on whatever podcast platform you're listing on, so you can get alerts when new episodes drop in new seasons.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you've got a story, you think deserves its own podcast, pitch it to me at JonathanWalton.com.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.