Family of late Zappos CEO calls ‘surprise’ will a scam as forgery signs mount

The dramatic battle over the estate of former Zappos chief executive Tony Hsieh has taken a sharp turn, with his family now formally alleging that proponents of a “surprise” will are pushing a scam built on forged signatures and fictitious names.

In a filing on Monday, lawyers for Hsieh’s father, Richard, who has been administering an estate worth more than $500 million since the entrepreneur’s death in 2020, asked a Nevada court to reject a will that surfaced earlier this year. After months of investigation, they say experts have concluded the document is not genuine.

“Scams come in all shapes and sizes,” attorneys for the estate wrote, arguing that in this case “the scam is in the form of a document being touted as the purported will of Anthony ‘Tony’ Hsieh.”

As reported by 8 News Now in Las Vegas, the disputed will, dated March 2015, showed up in March at the Clark County District Court’s clerk’s office in a plain mailing. It directs more than $50 million and several Las Vegas properties into a series of trusts whose beneficiaries are unknown, with the remainder going to Hsieh’s family. It also includes a no-contest clause that would cut his four surviving relatives out entirely if any of them challenges his stated wishes.

Hsieh, who sold Zappos to Amazon.com for $1.2 billion in 2009, died at age 46 after a house fire in New London, Connecticut. At the time, no will was found, and his father stepped in to manage what some court filings have valued at more than $800 million.

Since 2020, creditors and would-be beneficiaries have filed claims against the estate, while lawyers have argued Hsieh lacked capacity to sign contracts in the last phase of his life amid severe drug and alcohol problems. Against that backdrop, the sudden appearance of a detailed, seven-figure gifting plan has drawn intense scrutiny, with representatives of his estate vigorously challenging the surprise since spring.

An analysis by a document-forensics specialist hired by lawyers for his estate concluded Hsieh’s signature on the will was forged. A review by a linguistics expert found the text did not resemble work drafted by legal professionals and was likely written by non-native English speakers, according to the family’s filing.

There were even more red flags. The will spells Hsieh’s legal middle name “Chia Hua” rather than the hyphenated “Chia-Hua” used across his official paperwork, and it refers to at least one trust that does not exist.

Four supposed witnesses and a Pakistani man named in the will as a co-executor – Pir Muhammad – have also drawn questions. Estate lawyers say they cannot connect any of the witnesses to actual tenants at the Las Vegas apartment complexes listed for them, and at least one of the names appears nowhere in US records. Muhammad, who reportedly had Alzheimer’s and died in 2022, appears to have had no traceable relationship to Hsieh.

While the document names two Nevada attorneys, Robert Armstrong and Mark Ferrario, as co-executors, both have testified that they had never met Hsieh or his family before learning of their roles. Earlier this year, their lawyers accused the family’s legal team of taking a “scorched earth” approach, pointing to dozens of document requests as an attempt “to invalidate the Will.”

Family counsel pushed back on that framing. “There is nothing ‘scorched earth’ about thoroughly examining a document that comes out of nowhere, more than four years after Tony Hsieh’s death,” said attorney Dara Goldsmith, who added that Richard Hsieh “has faithfully administered his son Tony’s estate and guarded Tony’s legacy.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, a no-contest clause in the contested will stipulates that if any of Hsieh's surviving family members decide to fight his wishes, they will forfeit their right to inherit anything.

A Las Vegas court is expected to hear further arguments on the will in the coming days.