Brazilian woman tries "Weekend at Bernie's" trick to get bank loan

Walt loves stories about stupid criminals, and this is the best one I've heard in a looooong time. Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes, a resident of a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, has been arrested after she brought her uncle, Paulo Roberto Braga into a bank to co-sign for a loan. Unfortunately, Mr Braga, who was brought in in a wheelchair, was determined to be dead.

The Rio newspaper O Dia reports that, in a CCTV video, Ms Nunes is heard calling Braga her uncle as she speaks to the body and props up his head. "Uncle, are you listening?" she says. "You need to sign [the contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you."

She then grabs a pen and forces it into the hands of the corpse, saying, "Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore." According to the video, she replies "He doesn't say anything, that's just how he is," before turning to the dead body and adding: "If you're not okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital." 

Bank staff soon became suspicious as the man's head kept falling back so they called the police who arrested Ms Nunes. The cops allege that Mr Nunes, who was 68, had died just hours before, while ly ing down. "She knew he was dead," said the investigating officer. "He had been dead for at least two hours."

Ms Nunes now faces charges of violating a corpse and attempted theft through fraud. Her lawyer says that Mr Braga was alive when he entered the bank. "The facts did not occur as has been narrated. Paulo was alive when he arrived at the bank. All of this will be cleared up. We believe in Érika’s innocence."