An elderly man who stole the identities of dead children to con taxpayers out of $447,000 has been sentenced to three years and two months in prison.
Colin Diedrichs, who appeared in the Auckland District Court, remained undetected for more than 20 years as he claimed extra superannuation payments using the details of two boys who died in the 1930s and '40s.
One of the family members of the dead boys wrote to the court and described Diedrichs' offending as "horrible and distressing''.
The long-running rort was discovered only when Diedrichs applied for passports in the dead children's names.
He was arrested in November after a joint investigation by the Department of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Social Development and police.
The 82-year-old has pleaded guilty to 17 criminal charges, including use of a document to obtain a pecuniary advantage and false representation under two different names.
According to the Ministry of Social Development, the theft is the third largest benefit fraud ever uncovered.
Diedrichs' lawyer Lincoln Burns accepted it was a large amount of money but $350,000 would be returned to the Crown. He also sought a discount for Diedrichs' early guilty plea.
The retired gardener admitted to a Probation Officer that he knew what he had done was wrong.
"I had money but not enough. I was being greedy. I never thought I would get caught, looking at my age.''
The use of stolen identities of dead children is similar to how former Act MP David Garrett obtained a false passport.
Inspired by spy novel The Day of the Jackal, Garrett visited a cemetery in 1984 and found the gravestone of a two-year-old boy, whose birthdate was close to his own.
He copied the details, obtained the child's birth certificate, filled out a passport application and photographed himself in disguise.
Garrett was arrested in 2005 - before he entered Parliament - and resigned in disgrace in September 2010 when suppression orders were lifted to reveal his conviction for passport forgery.
The identity theft was described in court documents as "akin to stealing from the grave'' by the dead child's mother.
Benefit fraud cost taxpayers a record $22.6 million last year and nine social welfare staff were sacked for ripping off the system.
