Greek authorities are investigating a case in which a family allegedly hid an elderly woman’s death for years so they could keep collecting her pension, after her body was found wrapped in plastic in the basement of the family’s home in Marathon, northeast of Athens.
The case came to light after the woman’s granddaughter filed a police complaint against her own mother and uncle — the elderly woman’s daughter and son — after she was unable to locate a death certificate for her grandmother.
According to testimony reported by Greek broadcaster Mega, the granddaughter said she was told in 2015 that her grandmother had moved into a nursing home in the nearby town of Pentelis.
Two years later, her mother called to say the grandmother had died of colon cancer, though the family never disclosed any burial details.
The granddaughter said her suspicions deepened in August 2020, when she applied for a death certificate at the Pentelis civil registry while helping arrange the sale of the family’s home and was told none existed.
She said her uncle later told her by phone that he and her mother had been collecting the grandmother’s pension and had buried her in the yard of the Marathon house.
The woman’s daughter, 68, has told police her mother “fell somewhere,” and that she concealed the death to keep receiving pension payments.
A neighbor who is also a distant relative told Mega she believed the elderly woman — whom she said was nearing 100 — had been placed in a nursing home for about 1,200 euros a month.
