New York Post
In a mind-boggling scene straight out of “A Weekend at Bernie’s,” a Brazilian woman reportedly wheeled the corpse of an elderly man into a Rio de Janeiro bank Tuesday to try to get him to co-sign on a loan.
The bank customer, identified as Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes, was captured on video standing next to the deceased seated in a chair and seemingly holding up his drooping head.
The wild footage, which was first aired by TV Globo, Brazil’s largest broadcaster, captured Nunes talking to the dead man, whom she addressed as her “uncle,” and asking him to sign financial documents that would allow her to take out a $3,400 loan.
“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign [the loan contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you,” Nunes says in the video, while thrusting a pen between his limp fingers and instructing him to hold it “hard.”
“Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore,” she adds.
When a bank worker tries to point out that the man’s color looks off and he appears “not well,” Nunes dismisses his concerns.
“He is like that. He doesn’t say anything,” Nunes says. “Uncle, do you want to go to the [hospital] again?”
Unnerved bank staffers quickly called the police, who arrived and arrested Nunes.
It was later determined that the decedent, identified as 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga, had been dead for several hours prior to his trip to the bank.
“She tried to pretend to get him to sign the loan. He already entered the bank dead,” Police Chief Fábio Luiz told TV Globo. “The main thing is to continue the investigation to identify other family members, and find out more about this loan.”
Cops said they will look into the circumstances of Braga’s death and will try to determine whether Nunes is actually his niece, and whether other relatives were involved in the alleged attempt to commit bank fraud.
Nunes could face charges of theft through fraud, or embezzlement, and abuse of corpse.
This was originally published on The New York Post
