Woman wheels corpse into Brazil bank to sign for loan

RIO DE JANEIRO — A woman brought a 68-year-old man in a wheelchair into a bank branch and tried to get him to sign for a loan, but he had been dead for hours, Brazilian police said on Wednesday (April 17).

Erika Vieira Nunes wheeled the cadaver into the bank in a Rio suburb on Tuesday and told the teller the man wanted a loan for 17,000 reais (S$4,414), security camera video showed.

She held a pen and moved his hand forward to no response.

"Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign," she said, according to the security video, suggesting she sign for him.

"He doesn't say anything, that's just how he is," she said, adding, "If you're not okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital."

Bank staff became suspicious as the man's head kept falling back when the woman stopped holding it and they called the police, who arrested her on the spot on fraud charges. The corpse was taken to the morgue.

Her lawyer argued that the man died at the bank but a police forensic analysis determined he had died earlier, while lying down.

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