Brazilian Ricardo César Guedes, who stole the identity of a dead child and lived more than two decades as if he were an American citizen, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison.
The decision was announced this Thursday (21), by the District Court of South Texas. Guedes pleaded guilty to charges of falsifying the identity of a US citizen and giving false information when applying for a US passport. He has committed to undergoing psychological treatment and will be able to obtain the right to parole.
The court, which has not yet released the entirety of the decision, released him from paying the fine.
American investigators have discovered that Guedes spent more than two decades claiming to be William Ericson Ladd, an American born in 1974 in Atlanta.
The real Eric Ladd died in 1979, at the age of five, but it was under that name that Guedes made his career as a flight attendant. For nearly 25 years, he worked for United Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the world. He was also known in the Brazilian aviation community and used to participate in events and lectures.
He even joined humanitarian flights amid the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan in August 2021. An Apple fan, he transported iPhones to sell in Brazil and appeared in the press in 2012, including this Sheetalways named after Ladd, as the first person to buy a new version of the iPad in New York after 30 hours of queuing.
It is not known exactly how Guedes started the farce. He was born in São Paulo, in 1972, and, according to the American government, he entered the country twice with the Brazilian name and a tourist visa, in 1994 and 1996. In the year of this second trip, he managed to issue a social security number (equivalent to to the CPF in Brazil) with the name of Ladd, which paved the way for him to work legally in the USA. In 1997, he was hired by United, after taking flight attendant courses in Brazil.
His first American passport was issued on April 14, 1998, with no surprises. He renewed or asked for changes (such as more pages, as he traveled a lot by profession) to the document six more times, without arousing suspicion.
The warning light was turned on in 2020, when Ladd married a Brazilian and asked to change her passport to include her husband’s last name. The State Department’s Office of Consular Affairs was surprised that the Social Security number wasn’t issued until he was 22 — the document is often issued to babies, who need to be enrolled in a parent’s health plan or benefit programs. from the government.
The agency then identified another person of the same name, date and place of birth, the real William Ericson Ladd. That’s when the investigation began. When researching Guedes’ life, they found a series of ties with Brazil – such as the fact that he went to the country on more than half of the 40 trips he made abroad that 2020.
On his social media, the American government identified a Brazilian who, from the photos and publications, seemed to be his mother. The US Consulate General in Recife was called, and databases indicated that she had a son, born in Brazil, about the same age as the suspect.
The Americans then compared the fingerprints that the Brazilian government had collected in the 1990s from the woman’s son and confirmed that Ricardo César Guedes and the man who introduced himself as William Ericson Ladd were the same person. The next step was to consult with the Ladd family, who confirmed the boy’s death in 1979 and said they had never seen the person impersonating him.
After nearly a year of investigations, Guedes was arrested on September 22, 2021, at George Bush Airport in Houston. Agents met him at the departure gate and took him to a private room, where he identified himself as William Ericson Ladd and presented his passport.
During interrogation, he was warned: it is a crime to lie to a federal agent, and the government knew his true identity. He replied that he was born in the US but raised by missionary parents in Brazil.
The Texas court case reports that a police officer claimed he had a death certificate for the real Ladd, which made Guedes shut up. Authorities even showed a photo of the dead child’s grave in Alabama. The Brazilian then invoked his right to remain silent and was detained.
In prison, when the police went to take his fingerprints, Guedes asked which name he should fill in the form. According to the lawsuit, upon hearing that he should write his real name, he signed it “R. Cesar Guedes”.
With a search warrant, authorities found at his home in Houston, two copies of Ladd’s birth certificate and a card with his real name. At the time, her husband told agents that she had known him since childhood, in Brazil, and that she knew he was not who she said he was. According to the indictment, the partner should lose the authorization to live in the US, as he filed the immigration process on the basis of marriage to a false US citizen.
