The living Buddha and benefits fraud....

Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a celebrity. Records showed that Sogen Kato was, at 111 years, the oldest man in Tokyo. But when officials went to visit him in order to congratulate him, they found (after some resistance from his relatives) only his mummified body. Apparently he had been dead 30 years while his checks were still being cashed.

Mr Kato's relatives told police that he had "confined himself in his room more than 30 years ago and became a living Buddha," according to a report by Jiji Press.

But the family had received 9.5 million yen ($109,000: £70,000) in widower's pension payments via Mr Kato's bank account since his wife died six years ago, and some of the money had recently been withdrawn.

The pension fund had long been unable to contact Mr Kato.

HT MR