Valencia son charged with fraud after hiding dead father to keep pension payments coming in

An iron bar across the door and tape sealing the gaps kept the man’s room shut for months, hiding the answer to why a pensioner’s monthly payment kept landing after his death. His son has now been arrested after admitting he never told anyone his father had died.

A bedroom barred with iron and sealed with tape

The property in Vilamarxant, a town of around 15,000 people in the Camp de Túria (a district inland from Valencia), looked very normal from the outside. But behind one bedroom door, an iron bar had been wedged across the frame, and every gap around it sealed shut with insulating tape. Antonio Utiel Blesa, 93, had lived there with his 58-year-old son. Investigators believe he died of natural causes sometime between January and February this year, linked to his age and existing illnesses.

The brother who flew in from Japan that made the discovery

The concealment held until Monday August 10, when Antonio’s other son, who lives in Japan, returned to Vilamarxant to visit and grew concerned after losing touch with his father. When he pressed his brother for answers, he was told that something had happened to him. His brother then pulled away the iron bar and opened the bedroom door. “Ahí está” (there he is) he reportedly said, revealing a room that had stayed sealed for months. The shock reportedly triggered a panic attack in the visiting son, who left the property and rang a niece, who alerted the Local Police.

Guardia Civil forced entry after being turned away once

A first police visit to the house went unanswered, according to Las Provincias. Officers then returned with the Guardia Civil and forced their way inside. They found Utiel Blesa’s body still lying on the bed, and reportedly still wearing the watch he had on when he died. The room itself had been taped up to stop the smell escaping into the rest of the house. 

The body was taken to the Institute of Legal Medicine in Valencia for a post-mortem. Forensic examiners have so far found no signs of violence, and the working theory remains a natural death.

Seven months of pension payments are now part of a fraud case

While his father’s death went unreported, the son continued to draw the monthly state pension paid into the household. Spanish reports put the length of concealment between seven and eight months, agreeing that it must have stretched from around February through to this month. Under Spanish rules, families normally have 30 working days to notify Social Security of a pensioner’s death, and any payments wrongly received after that must be repaid. Knowingly continuing to claim a dead relative’s pension is itself treated as a criminal offence, the same charge now filed against the son in Vilamarxant. 

He has also been charged with abandoning a person at risk, though he was released from custody with an obligation to appear periodically before a judge while the Guardia Civil in Llíria continues its investigation.

It is not the first time a family member in Spain has been accused of concealing a death to keep a pension coming in. In 2021, a man in Alicante was found to have collected more than €90,000 from his dead mother’s pension over several years.