A couple in Austria came up with a cunning plan to cheat the country’s insurance system.
A couple in Austria married and divorced 12 times in the last 40 yearswhile the neighbors described their relationship as “standard”.
The “wedding” to them was allegedly part of a cunning plan to win 326,000 euros from the country’s pension system.
The couple is now under investigation for serious fraud. The cunning androgynous allegedly took advantage of a loophole in Austrian law that allowed the wife to claims 27,000 euros for each new marriage.
The woman, who is actually married 13 timesbegan receiving a widow’s pension from the state to enable her to live on after the death of her first husband in 1981according to Bild.
Just a year later, the now 73-year-old married for the first time her second husband, who is a few years younger than her. They divorced six years later in 1988, citing his “relationship problems”. marriage them because of his work as a truck driver.
This separation started a cycle of marriages, divorces and remarriages, with each remarriage lasting about three years.
However, officers discovered that the couple had never been divorced. On the contrary, neighbors and relatives testified that the couple had been living together all this time.
Witnesses even described their relationship as the “standard marriage”.
Their marriage, which was constantly repeated, was a clever scheme to cheat Austria’s insurance system and maximize the profits from this widow’s pension that the wife received. Each time the couple divorced, the law allowed the payments to continue, meaning they could claim the €27,000 compensation for the other 11 times they remarried. This continued for decades, allowing the couple to earn €326,000 from the pension scheme.
Police in Graz, Austria have now launched a serious fraud investigation and a trial is expected.
