Like a real-life Norman Bates from the movie Psycho, an American man dressed up as his deceased mother in a bizarre plot to claim thousands of dollars in benefits.

Thomas Parkin was arrested after an alleged fraud in which he impersonated his mother Irene at the Brooklyn Department of Motor Vehicles and attempted to renew her driver’s licence.

According to authorities, Mr Parkin wore a pink jacket and a blonde wig, nail polish, lipstick and dark glasses in an attempt to convince people he was Irene, who had been dead for six years.

Mr Parkin, 49, was charged yesterday with impersonated his mother in order to collect $117,000 (£71,000) in government benefits. He and the man accused of being his accomplice, Mhilton Rimolo, 47, pleaded not guilty to grand larceny, criminal impersonation and other charges after an alleged six-year plot.

When arrested on Monday, Mr Parkin allegedly told police detectives: "I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath, so I am my mother."

Charles Hynes , the Brooklyn District Attorney, said that the alleged scam was “unparalleled in its scope and brazenness”.

Mr Hynes told the New York Daily News that Parkin had said he was “not Norman Bates”, the character from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller Psycho who dressed up as his mother, Norma.

"He said he's not Norman Bates," Mr Hynes said. "This guy is not stupid, this guy is very smart. His schemes were brilliant."

One of the detectives who worked on the case said that Mr Parkin had gone to great lengths to disguise himself, even wearing a scarf around his neck to cover his Adam’s apple. But some things could not be hidden.

"He has rather large hands," Michael Vecchione, who heads the Rackets Bureau, told the New York Daily News.

Mr Parkin, who had lived with his mother, was accused of hatching the scheme after she died in 2003 at the age of 73. He allegedly concealed her death in order to collect $52,000 from her $700-a-month benefit payments over the next six years, prosecutors said.

Authorities say that Mr Parkin received a further $65,000 in rent subsidies by falsely claiming that he had a disability and that his mother was still alive and was his landlord.

He had allegeldy used Mr Rimolo to pose as the mother's nephew when going to cash benefit cheques and carry out other business, prosecutors said. A security camera image from the motor registry office shows Mr Parkin dressed as his frail-looking mother with Mr Rimolo filling out paperwork by his side.

The ruse had began to unravel amid a dispute over the mother's home, which was sold at foreclosure in 2003, police allege. Mr Parkin challenged the purchase by suing the new owner on his mother's behalf so that he would not be evicted.

As the property dispute dragged out, each side accused the other of fraud. By the time investigators arranged a meeting with the family in May, they already had proof that Mr Parkin's mother was dead — a photograph of her grave.

Mr Parkin and Mr Rimolo deny all charges.

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