São Paulo, Brazil – A woman in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday took the corpse of an elderly man into a bank to try to take out a loan of R$17,000 (USD $3,400), local Brazil media reported.
Suspicious bank employees filmed the incident and called the police. The woman was reportedly taken into custody, and the bizarre video soon went viral on social media.
The story was first reported by TV Globo, the largest news broadcaster in Brazil, which shared a blurred version of the video.
In it, a woman, identified as Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes, is standing next to a pale, elderly man in a chair. She’s apparently holding the man’s head up, talking to him, and asking him to sign loan papers.
Nunes allegedly introduced herself as the elderly man’s niece. “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,” said Nunes in the video.
“He’s not well, his color…” said one bank employee.
“He is like that. He doesn’t say anything,” Nunes responded. “Uncle, do you want to go to the hospital again?”
The employees soon called police, who later determined that the man, identified as 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga, had been dead for a few hours.
“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.”
Police said they’ll investigate the circumstances of the elderly man’s death, including whether the woman is in fact his niece, and whether other people participated in the attempted fraud. Nunes could be charged with theft through fraud or embezzlement depending on the conclusion of the investigation. The elderly man’s body was taken by authorities for investigation.
Within a few short hours, the Portuguese word for corpse, “cadáver,” became the most trending topic on Brazilian X (formerly Twitter).
