A NEW YORK man has been sentenced to more than 13 years behind bars for a bizarre real estate fraud where he dressed up like his dead mother to renew a driver's licence under her name.

Thomas Parkin was convicted May 3 on charges including grand larceny and mortgage fraud.

Prosecutors say Parkin's mother died in 2003 and the building she owned was sold at a foreclosure auction. Parkin pretended his dead mother was still alive to file a false lawsuit against the new owners.

Prosecutors argued he collected $44,000 in social security checks belonging to his mom, doctored her death certificate and went to the department of motor vehicles dressed as her so he could get a renewed licence.



"He said he’s not Norman Bates," reported Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.



But detectives say that Parkin sounded undeniably Batesian when he insisted to them that it would be wrong to accuse him of impersonating his mother because he had actually become her at the moment of her demise in 2003.



“I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath, so I am my mother,” Parkin told detectives.ay that Parkin sounded undeniably Batesian when he insisted to them that it would be wrong to accuse him of impersonating his mother because he had actually become her at the moment of her demise in 2003. I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath, so I am my mother,” Parkin told detective

