A man accused of hiding his dad’s dead body for more than a year so he could keep claiming his pension has been detained.

The 25-year-old told officers he had concealed his parent’s body for a year and a half following his death in the family home, Spain’s Civil Guard confirmed.

Police searched the house in the town of Torrecaballeros near Segovia where they found the corpse stored in a wardrobe.

The father is thought to have died of natural causes, although his age at death is as of yet unknown and an investigation has been opened into the incident.

His son could face up to two years in prison if charged with concealing the whereabouts of a body.

Authorities have also not ruled out other charges, including fraudulently claiming the pension for more than a year and accessing a deceased person’s finances.

There have been previous examples of relatives hiding the body of deceased familiy members for economic gain.

A Greek man was arrested last month for hiding his dead father in a basement freezer for two-and-a-half years.

The 55-year-old from the Peloponnese had lied to investigators that his father had gone to live in Athens, RTE reported.

Authorities later discovered the corpse in a freezer in a former hotel that had been converted to housing in the town of Mystras.

In 2023, two Canadian walkers discovered the body of an Italian man in a cave some 250 kilometres from his home in Puglia.

Bruno Delnegro was hidden by his sons in a bid to claim his €3,000-a-month pension.

Rather than notify authorities of the death, the family had placed the 81-year-old’s body in a sleeping bag, before driving it across to the village of Castrovalva in the Abruzzo region.

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