$450 Cash and a Fake Cable Bill: How a Mass. RMV Parking Lot Became a Crime Scene

A Brazilian national living in Boston illegally pleaded guilty this week to his role in a scheme that helped more than 600 undocumented immigrants get fraudulent driver's licenses across Massachusetts and New York. One of the most brazen moments in the case happened right in a Plymouth, MA RMV parking lot.

On April 24, 2024, Gabriel Nascimento De Andrade accepted $450 in cash from a customer outside the Plymouth Registry of Motor Vehicles. In return, he handed over a fake cable bill showing the customer lived at a Massachusetts address. That phony document was then submitted to the RMV as proof of residency.

Federal prosecutors say Nascimento De Andrade and his co-conspirators ran the operation from November 2020 through September 2024. Before July 2023, Massachusetts did not allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. So the group drove customers to New York, where different rules applied, and equipped them with forged documents along the way. -boston25news.com

The fraud went deeper than fake utility bills. Co-conspirators also took online permit tests on behalf of customers, uploaded staged photos to fool the New York DMV's webcam verification system, and produced counterfeit driver's education certificates with forged signatures.

In total, prosecutors say the group applied for licenses on behalf of more than 1,000 customers, successfully obtained over 600 of them, and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it.

Nascimento De Andrade is the third person to plead guilty in the case. Two co-conspirators have already been sentenced to between nine and ten months in prison. His sentencing is set for April 9. He faces up to five years behind bars.