Mother of all scams just gets weirder: Thomas Prusik Parkin kept casket in his living room

William Sherman
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, June 18th 2009, 4:59 AM

Tina Zimmer

Thomas Prusik Parkin, who is accused of impersonating his dead mother, Irene Pusik, stands beside her coffin during wake at Brooklyn funeral home in 2003.

Adams for News

The gravestone of Irene Prusik, mother of alleged fraudster Thomas Prusik Parkin.

Adams for News

Thomas Prusik Parkin and Mhilton Rimolo (below) are escorted to the Brooklyn Supreme Court by detectives.

Adams for News

A Brooklyn man accused of dressing as his dead mother to collect $1 million in benefits and loans kept a casket in his living room, investigators said.

City marshals made the discovery when they showed up to evict Thomas Prusik Parkin and his brother from a Park brownstone at the center of the alleged scam.

It's unclear why Parkin had the coffin - another bizarre detail in a case so twisted it shocked probers from the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

"Mark Twain said truth is stranger than fiction, and this is a great example of that," Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes said yesterday as Parkin was indicted.

He was hit with 47 counts of grand larceny, forgery and conspiracy. His alleged accomplice, Mhilton Rimolo, also was indicted.

They face up to 25 years in prison if they're convicted. After pleading guilty, they were ordered held in lieu of $1 million bail.

Parkin, 49, allegedly began posing as his mother, Irene Prusik, after she died in 2003.

He filed a blizzard of bogus documents with government agencies, collecting $62,000 in Social Security payments and $65,000 in state rent subsidies, officials said.

Rimolo, 47, is accused of posing as Irene Prusik's nephew and escorting Parkin - who walked with a cane and wore a wig, makeup, nail polish and long, red dresses.

"He said he's not Norman Bates," Hynes said, referring to the twisted character from the movie "Psycho" who dons his dead mother's clothing.

"This guy is not stupid; this guy is very smart. His schemes were brilliant."

Bureaucrats, banks, lawyers, mortgage brokers and title company representatives were all fooled by the cross-dressing con, prosecutors said.

Just two months ago, Parkin allegedly posed as his mother to get a $938,250 mortgage on a $2.2 million Park Slope brownstone - despite the fact it was owned by someone else who bought it in foreclosure in 2003.

Parkin and his family lived in the home for decades and stayed after it was sold.

Until the marshals showed up in March, he managed to avoid eviction and paying rent with a flurry of legal actions in which he posed as his mother and even invented a son and a nephew, officials said.