Woman Seen on Video Allegedly Wheeling Dead Relative's Corpse into Bank to Sign Loan

Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes was seen in a video allegedly trying to guide the hand of her deceased relative, which reportedly prompted suspicion from bank staff

• Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes allegedly tried to secure a loan for more than the equivalent of $3,000 by getting a dead man to sign off on it

• A bank employee observed in the video that the deceased man, Paulo Roberto Braga, had "no color on his face," per reports

• Nunes has been charged with theft by fraud and abuse of corpse, according to Brazilian authorities

A woman in Brazil was arrested after she allegedly brought the corpse of an elderly man to a bank and tried to get him to sign paperwork by guiding his hands, according to several reports.

Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes, 42, was captured in a widely-circulated video seemingly trying to get a motionless man in a wheelchair to sign a paper at a Rio de Janeiro bank, according to a clip released by Brazilian digital news outlet g1.

The man, who authorities say was deceased at the time, was 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga, The Washington Post reported. Nunes reportedly identified herself as his niece and caregiver.

She was allegedly trying to get him to sign a loan of the equivalent of $3,250, per Brazilian police, Reuters reported.

In the video, Nunes is seen sitting in a bank booth with her hand on the back of the man. The man's head keeps falling back, and his hands rest motionless on his leg. The woman appears to talk to him while holding a pen in her other hand, with the documents in front of them on the table.

"Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign," she says, according to a translated transcript by Reuters and The Washington Post.

At one point, Nunes briefly looks up at the camera and smiles, before going back to talking to the deceased man as his head keeps falling back, the video shows.

Nunes appears to tap the man's chin in an apparent attempt to get him to talk. But the man does not move, except for when Nunes moves his head or when the head falls back.

"He doesn't say anything, that's just how he is," Nunes says in the video. "If you're not okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital."

“If you don’t sign, there’s no way," she says in another portion of the video, according to CNN. "I can’t sign for you, it has to be you. What I can do, I do.”

“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 says, per the outlet.

"I don’t think he’s okay," an employee says in the video, according to The Washington Post. "There’s no color in his face.”

Police were notified after bank staff grew suspicious, according to Reuters. Nunes was arrested at the scene and has been charged with theft by fraud, according to Reuters and The Washington Post.

She was also charged with abuse of a corpse, per g1 andThe Washington Post.

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The woman’s family lawyer has denied the claims of alleged fraud and said “the facts did not happen as stated,” CNN Brasil reported.

“[T]he man has arrived at the bank alive," the lawyer said, per the outlet, and added that "the woman is completely shaken and medicated.”

However, investigators claim medical examination showed the man had died lying down — not sitting up — and that he had been dead for hours at the time of the bank incident, per The Washington Post.

“Anyone watching the video can tell he was dead,” lead investigator of the case, Fábio Souza, told the television network Globonews, per The Washington Post. “Can you imagine her? she was touching him. She knew he was dead.”

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