Earlier this year we told you about the strange, convoluted saga of Tony Hsieh’s estate. Hsieh was the founder of online retailer Zappos; he sold it to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009. He died in a fire in 2020, age 46. A resident of Nevada, Hsieh left behind his father Richard, his mother, and two brothers. He had no spouse and no children – and apparently, no estate plan, either. It was assumed that he had died intestate, making his parents sole beneficiaries of his estate.
But five years after he passed on, a Will mysteriously appeared. We wrote about this development in a prior post which you can read here. But before we tell you about the dramatic new developments in this story, let’s recount the basic facts.
Mystery Will Appeared Five Years After Death
In February 2025, five years after Hsieh’s death, a Will purporting to be Hsieh’s was sent to the Clark County District Court in Nevada. Dated March 13, 2015, it supposedly was found among the belongings of the deceased Pir Muhammad. Kashif Singh, who said he is Muhammad’s grandson, claimed that his grandfather and Hsieh were “dear friends,” even though no one in Hsieh’s social or business circles had ever heard of him.
The Will states that Hsieh is putting the document in Muhammad’s care to prevent anyone from tampering with it. It provides millions in bequests for Harvard University, the Gates Foundation and several other non-profits, with the residue going to his family. It also includes a no-contest clause indicating that any family member who challenges the Will gets nothing. (No-contest clauses are valid in Nevada, but not in Florida.) Two attorneys were appointed as co-executors, neither of whom had ever had dealings with Hsieh.
The court had appointed Hsieh’s father as administrator of the estate. Since his son’s death, he has been working to identify his son’s many assets. When the surprise Will turned up, he took on another task: determining whether the document is valid. Many experts were hired to investigate.
Their conclusion: The Will is a forgery. This month, Hsieh’s attorneys filed a petition in the Nevada court requesting that it be set aside.
The Evidence For Forgery
Hsieh’s father presented several key pieces of evidence indicating the Will is likely a fake. Among them:
- Pir Muhammad has no known connection to Hsieh.
- The two Nevada attorneys named as co-executors never had any dealings with Hsieh.
- Document forensics experts determined that Hsieh’s signature on the Will is not Hsieh’s handwriting.
- Five people supposedly witnessed Hsieh signing the document, but none of those witnesses can be found. “Their contact information has been fabricated, and likely, they do not exist in real life,” the petition states.
- Tony Hsieh was known to keep meticulous, detailed calendars. These records offer no evidence that Hsieh actually attended the Will signing on March 13, 2015.
- A linguistics professor from Oxford University was hired to examine the document. The court filing notes that he “concluded with a high degree of confidence that the Purported 2015 Will was not authored or edited by Tony and that the individuals responsible for drafting the document were not trained legal professionals and were likely non-native speakers of English.”
- Kashif Singh, the man who allegedly found the Will among his grandfather’s belongings, cannot be found.
- The address listed for Singh in the Will appears to have “been implicated in fraudulent schemes conducted through shell companies.”
- Hsieh’s name is misspelled in several places in the Will.
What now? A status check for the case is scheduled for January 5, 2026. At that time Judge Gloria Sturman may rule on the contested Will.
Takeaways
You do not need to be a billionaire like Tony Hsieh to glean lessons from this strange case. The takeaways are so obvious that they need little elaboration:
- Create A Plan. First, create a thoughtful estate plan. If you die intestate, the state will decide who gets your assets, not you. No one loves talking about their mortality, but getting your ducks in a row for that eventuality is a great act of love for your family. You cannot spare them grief over losing you, but you can spare them the additional agony and inconvenience the Hsieh family is experiencing.
- Use An Experienced Estate Planning Attorney. Make sure your estate planning documents are prepared by an experienced estate planning attorney. The attorney will guide you so that every “I” is dotted and “T” is crossed and your document conforms to up-to-date state and federal law. Do-it-yourself document preparation is a poor idea, often creating legal complications for families. And when those complications arise, you won’t be around to resolve them.
- Keep Your Documents In A Safe Place. Make sure your trusted family members know your estate plan exists. Let your personal representative and successor trustees know how to access them when the time comes.
For help creating your own estate plan, call on The Karp Law Firm. We have offices in Palm Beach Gardens, Boynton Beach and Port St. Lucie. Reach us at (561) 625-1100.
