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A seven-page document arrived by mail at a Las Vegas courthouse last year. It was addressed as the last will and testament of Tony Hsieh, the founder and former CEO of Zappos, who died in 2020 at age 46 after suffering injuries in a Connecticut house fire. Hsieh had been widely believed to have died without a will.
The document's sudden appearance, reported by Fox News citing The Wall Street Journal, set off a legal dispute that has now drawn forensic scientists, a former Secret Service lab director, and competing family members.
The alleged will contains a no-contest clause targeting Hsieh's parents and two younger brothers. Under its terms, if one family member challenged the document, all of them could be cut out. Hsieh's father, Richard Hsieh, has demanded a jury trial.
The document also arrived at the office of Las Vegas trust attorney Robert Armstrong, who said he never met Hsieh despite being named as a co-executor in the alleged will. A man who identified himself as Kashif Singh reportedly called Armstrong's office and claimed he found the document among the belongings of his late grandfather. The office later received what appeared to be the grandfather's death certificate from Balochistan, Pakistan.
More than a year later, the origin of the document remains murky. The man who allegedly sent it has not appeared in court. The witnesses listed on the document have not come forward. Hsieh's family has called the alleged will a scam.
In May, a Las Vegas judge appointed forensic specialist Gerry LaPorte as a special master to oversee testing of the document. LaPorte's team began examining the purported will in early June at the courthouse, after shipping about 150 pounds of forensic gear from his Virginia lab to Nevada. The testing is focused largely on ink analysis, including the ink used on the signatures. Results could help determine whether the document is consistent with its stated 2015 date or whether the signatures were added at a later time.
Additional tests could include handwriting analysis, fingerprint scans, and DNA examination.
Hsieh's family hired its own forensic expert, Larry Stewart, a former U.S. Secret Service lab director and chief forensic scientist who worked on major cases including the Unabomber investigation and reinvestigations of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy.
LaPorte is expected to submit a written report by July 24. After that, the family's experts can respond. Fox News Digital reached out to Armstrong, Singh, and the Hsieh family's attorney, Dara Goldsmith, for comment.
