Woman arrested after taking dead 'uncle' to a bank in a wheelchair to co-sign loan

A woman was arrested after pushing a corpse in a wheelchair inside a bank—in an attempt to make the dead man co-sign a P194,000 loan with her.

Media outlets like The Washington Post, TMZ, and The Independent reported that Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes brought the body of Paulo Roberto Braga in a bank in the Bangu neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Braga, 68, had died a few hours earlier.

In a video captured by a bank employee, Nunes can be heard calling Braga “uncle” even as she asked him to co-sign on a loan for approximately $3,400 (P194,000).

“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign [the contract],” she said. “If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you.”

Nunes then grabbed a pen and forced it into Braga’s hands, telling him to hold the pen “hard.”

“Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore,” she said.

A bank employee noted that the man looked ill and had unusual color, but Nunes ignored him.

“He is like that. He doesn’t say anything,” she said. “Uncle, do you want to go to the [hospital] again?”

That was when the bank called the authorities.

Police arrested Nunes on the scene upon learning that she had been pushing a dead man around. She may face charges like fraud, embezzlement, and abuse of a corpse.

“She tried to pretend to get him to sign the loan. He already entered the bank dead,” police chief Fábio Luiz told local broadcaster TV Globo. “The main thing is to continue the investigation to identify other family members, and find out more about this loan.”

Investigation is ongoing regarding Braga’s death, whether Nunes is really his niece, and if other relatives could be trying to commit bank fraud.

Nunes’s lawyer, meanwhile, claimed Braga was alive when he entered the bank.