- By Shivangi Sharma
- Thu, 16 Oct 2025 04:36 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
In one of Taiwan’s most shocking forgery cases, a 59-year-old woman was caught using the fingerprints of a deceased man to falsify a multimillion-dollar loan agreement. The woman, surnamed Li, was sentenced by the Hsinchu District Court after she attempted to use the dead man’s prints to validate fake financial documents at a funeral home in Hsinchu, northwestern Taiwan.
Li and the deceased, identified as Peng, were previously involved in a long-standing debt dispute. When Li learned that Peng had died on February 21, she rushed to the Hsinchu City Funeral Parlor just hours after his death. Pretending to “pay her last respects,” she approached his body with a forged mortgage agreement and a promissory note worth USD280,000.
According to court documents, Li brought her own ink pad to the funeral centre. She then pressed Peng’s lifeless hand onto the fake documents, attempting to create the illusion that he had endorsed them before his death.
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Caught Red-Handed By Funeral Staff
The bizarre scene unfolded around 11 am, roughly six hours after Peng’s death. Funeral home employees noticed Li behaving suspiciously near the hearse where Peng’s body was kept. When they saw her pressing the deceased man’s hand onto papers, they immediately alerted Peng’s family, who called the police.
Police officers arrived at the funeral centre and arrested Li on the spot. They confiscated the forged mortgage document, a fake bank cheque, and the ink pad she used. During questioning, Li admitted she feared she would lose the money she claimed to have lent Peng, so she tried to secure repayment through fraudulent means.
Court’s Judgment And Sentence
On October 2, the Hsinchu District Court found Li guilty of forging a financial document but noted that the forged papers had not been used or processed. Taking into account her confession and cooperation, the court suspended her sentence for five years.
Li was also ordered to pay USD 1,600 to the government and perform 90 hours of community service at designated public welfare organisations.