WOMAN ARRESTED FOR WHEELING UNCLE'S CORPSE INTO A BANK TO SECURE A LOAN ON HIS BEHALF
A 42-year-old woman Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes has been taken into custody in Brazil for allegedly using a corpse to secure a loan, as reported by PEOPLE. In a viral clip, available with Brazilian digital news outlet g1 the woman is caught on camera trying to guide a man's hands to get signs on documents. The dead body was wheeled into the premises by the woman but bank officials found the whole thing odd and contacted the authorities. When the police arrived at the scene, they found out that the man who was supposed to sign the documents was dead. Following this development, they took Nunes into custody and started their investigation.
Nunes claims to be the niece and caregiver of the man in question, who was revealed to be 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga by The Washington Post's report. Nunes wheeled Braga's body into the bank in order to get a $3,250 loan under his name, as per Brazilian police, Reuters reported. The video featured the woman supporting the corpse from the back as both of them sat in the cubicle. His head kept rolling back but she kept it in place, and even though there was no movement at all from the man's end, Nunes constantly kept talking to him. At one point she kept her hand on the man's chin to make him 'talk.' "Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign," she was heard saying.
Nunes also kept looking at the camera briefly from time to time, and seeing that people were getting suspicious, she attempted to justify the silence of the man sitting with her. She went on to say things such as, "He doesn't say anything, that's just how he is." "If you're not okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital." CNN reported that in another part of the video she adopts a threatening tone towards the corpse. “Sign it so you don’t give me any more headaches, having to go to the registry office. I can’t take it anymore,” Nunes said. An employee noted that the man had no color on his face and decided to tip off the authorities. The police finally took the body to a morgue after discovering the truth and the woman was apprehended and charged with theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse.
Nunes' legal representative denied all allegations against their client. They further shared that the sequence of events is not the way they have been presented in the media.“[T]he man has arrived at the bank alive," the lawyer said. "the woman is completely shaken and medicated.” Investigators have rejected the claim, as forensic analysis reveals that the man most likely died lying down and not sitting up on the chair as shown in the clip. “Anyone watching the video can tell he was dead,” lead investigator of the case, Fábio Souza, told the television network Globonews, as per The Washington Post. “Can you imagine her? She was touching him. She knew he was dead.”