Attorneys for Tony Hsieh’s Family Find Few Clues About Surprise Will

[Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.]

Lawyers for the late tech entrepreneur Tony Hsieh’s family are still trying to figure out the truth behind a will that appeared earlier this year, more than four years after his death.

In recent court filings, the family’s attorneys said they traced two envelopes connected to the will. One was mailed from Connecticut and another from Pennsylvania, each with return addresses in other states. So far, they have found little information about who wrote the will, who signed it, or who the people named in it actually are.

Hsieh, the former Zappos CEO, died in 2020 and left behind an estate worth about $500 million. His family believed he had no will, and his father, Richard Hsieh, has been in charge of his estate since then.

The new will names Robert Armstrong and Mark Ferrario as special administrators. A judge in Las Vegas, Gloria Sturman, approved their appointment to represent the will, saying the situation was “odd, but not necessarily invalid.”

The document also includes a no-contest clause that would disinherit any family member who challenges it. It says more than $50 million and several Las Vegas properties should go to a series of unnamed trusts.

The man who mailed the will, Kashif Singh, said he found it among the belongings of his late grandfather, Pir Muhammad, who had dementia and died in Pakistan in 2022. Singh has not been located since.

Hsieh’s attorneys reviewed files from seven different lawyers who worked with him while he was alive. None of those files mentioned any signed estate documents or this will. The court has now given anyone who wants to challenge the will three months to come forward.

For more information see Angel Au-Yeung and Katherine Sayre “Attorneys for Tony Hsieh’s Family Find Few Clues About Surprise Will,” The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2025.