Getting greedy

We've all dabbled in a little harmless welfare fraud here and there, but come on, guy:

A former Greek policeman who invented 19 fictional offspring to claim benefits for what would have been the largest family in Greece has been arrested for benefit fraud, police said.

The former police officer, divorced and with no children of his own, quit his 1,000-euro-a-month ($1,300) job in 2001 and has been living solely on benefits ever since, police said on Thursday.

Using photographs of children he found online, the 54-year-old man forged birth certificates and other documents needed to claim benefits for at least one child a year since 1996.

Police estimate he made at least 150,000 euros in claims over 15 years, but the actual amount is probably much higher.

On the one hand, you can fault the guy for thinking he could get away with gaming the system by completely making up the largest family in the country. On the other hand, you can't really fault him for that, seeing as how the authorities never really seemed to notice his gigantic fake family (or his gigantic brass balls) until he had already suckered them out of a bunch of money for a decade and a half.