A man has been sentenced to two years in prison for claiming his father's disability pension for 15 years after his father died.
The Supreme Court has upheld the sentence originally passed in Cantabria, finding the man guilty of aggravated fraud for concealing his own father's death from the authorities for over a decade, and continuing to cash his full disability benefits.
An official statement from the Supreme Court confirmed that the defendant's father died in February 1998 and had been claiming benefits for permanent disability at the time.
According to the court, the son concealed his father's death "with the obvious intention of making illegal gains", defrauding the BBVA bank and the Social Security system right up until 2013.
The judge confirmed the two-year sentence for fraud imposed on the defendant by the Provincial Court of Cantabria a year ago, rejecting the defendant's claims that he himself had alerted Social Security to the error and that he had already been ordered by the civil courts to repay the money.
The sentence also carries a 1,440€ fine and the obligation to pay back almost 85,000€ in Social Security benefits, taking into account that almost 100,000€ have already been repaid.
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