A woman has admitted keeping her mother’s body in her cellar since the pensioner died five months ago - to claim benefits.
The unnamed daughter has been detained for fraud, accused of pretending her mother was still alive to pocket her pension payments.
In a video she claimed she hid the corpse in the village of Mytkyv, in the Ukraine, because she could not afford a funeral for her mother.
“I didn't have the money to bury the body,” she said. “We wrapped her …and her belongings into a blanket and moved her body down to the cellar.”
Later she confessed to police that after her mother died on January 2, she hid the body while pretending to friends and neighbours she was still alive, police sources say.
She admitted pocketing pension money worth around £235, which she had authorisation to draw on her mother’s behalf while the woman was alive.
The daughter now faces two years of “correctional labour” and will be forced to repay the pension money to the state.
