A Brazilian woman tries to get her “uncle” to take out a loan for her at a bank after he had already died.
Brazilian woman arrested for abusing corpse
Authorities in Brazil revealed that 68-year-old Paulo Robert Braga had already passed away by the time 42-year-old Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes transported him into a bank in Rio de Janeiro.
Nunes was caught on camera conversing with the elderly man as if he were alive and attempting to help him sign paperwork for a loan in his name amounting to $3,234.
G1, a news platform from Brazil, reported that the bank staff quickly grew suspicious of Nunes’ actions, spotting several clear signs that things were not as they seemed.
Security footage from within the bank shows Nunes trying to prop Braga’s head up while engaging in a conversation that was very much one-sided.
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BODY OF EVIDENCE
A Brazilian Woman Who Wheeled A CORPSE Into A Bank, Allegedly To Obtain A £3000 Withdraw From The deceased's Account, Has Been Arrested After The Bank Was Concerned That The Dead Man 'Didn't look Very Well' And Called Cops. pic.twitter.com/c8fxvzyvUr— TONYINBHAM (@TT0121) April 18, 2024
“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign. If you don’t sign it, there’s no way,” Nunes is heard speaking in Portuguese. “I can’t sign it for you. I’ll do what I can do.”
“You hold your chair very strong there,” she tells her dead uncle’s body, while trying to convince the bank tellers that he was still alive. “Didn’t he hold the door there just now?” She asked them.
Nunes seemed annoyed at the corpse’s noncompliance. “Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches. I can’t take it anymore,” she told the stiff.
One of the tellers, who wasn’t aware that Braga was no longer amongst the living, certainly knew something fishy was going on. “I don’t think this is legal,” the teller remarked. “He doesn’t look well. He’s very pale.”
“He is like this,” Nunes shot back, then threatened body of Braga with medical attention. “If you are not well, you will go to the hospital,” she told him.
The bank’s employees, who were in total disbelief at the situation, called the police, who arrested Nunes when they arrived.
Police chief Fábio Souza, told CNN Brazil that Nunes faces charges of attempted theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse.
Should she be found guilty of the latter charge alone, Nunes could be looking at a sentence of up to three years in prison along with a monetary penalty.
In her statements to the police, Nunes refused to admit any wrongdoing and insisted that Braga had passed away while they were waiting at the bank.
She claimed to have picked him up from an urgent care center and wanted to secure a loan for a new television and home repairs.
A taxi driver that picked the pair up from Braga’s home and dropped them off at a local mall corroborated Nunes story.
He said that helped the deceased man out of bed and into the car, then spent seven minutes alone with him while Nunes searched for a wheelchair at the mall.
The driver also claimed that Braga “held the car door” open while he was being transferred into the wheelchair.
Police doubt Brazilian woman’s story
However, medical examiners found that the man had been dead for at least two hours before his alleged niece’s attempt to secure a loan in his name.
According to the Daily Mail, an autopsy report released on Wednesday concluded that Paulo Braga’s death resulted from “bronchoaspiration and heart failure.”
The medical examiner’s office is now awaiting further tests to determine if Braga died naturally, or was subjected to poisoning.
The findings of the autopsy report noted, “Such data corroborates the necroscopic finding of malnutrition and bronchoaspiration. The previous heart disease found also contributed to the death event.”
