A woman was arrested, and her uncle was sent to the morgue after she wheeled his corpse into a bank in Brazil and tried to obtain a loan with his signature.
He couldn’t give it, of course, being dead.
Security video showed Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes, 42, wheeling the late Paulo Roberto Braga, 68, into a Rio de Janeiro bank on Tuesday and requesting a $3,250 loan on his behalf.
The loan was already approved but needed his signature, CNN reported. He was silent.
Creeped-out employees began recording.
“Uncle Paulo, are you listening?” Nunes asked, according to The Washington Post. “You need to sign it. If you don’t sign it, there’s no way. I can’t sign it for you.”
His head lolled lifelessly each time his dutiful niece stopped holding it up from behind with her cupped hand
Nunes stuck a pen in his hand and moved it to make him sign, but he did not comply.
“I don’t think he’s okay,” an employee could be heard saying. “There’s no color in his face.”
Nunes tried to blame his reticence on his personality and said he was just a pale-looking guy.
“He doesn’t say anything, that’s just how he is,” she said, according to Reuters, then told Braga, “If you’re not okay, I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
Bank personnel called paramedics and police, who arrested Nunes for fraud and took her uncle to the morgue. Nunes also faces charges of abusing a corpse.
Nunes insisted her uncle had been alive when they entered the bank, but the paramedics said he’d been dead for hours.
“Anyone watching the video can tell he was dead,” lead investigator Fábio Souza told Brazil’s Globonews, according to The Washington Post. “Can you imagine her? She was touching him. She knew he was dead.”
Further, investigators said analysis indicated he had died lying down, not in the chair he rode in on.
Authorities were investigating whether Nunes, who said she was her uncle’s main caregiver, was even actually his niece. They were also seeking whoever drove the pair to the bank.
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