For six months forward of the 2022-23 faculty yr, former DCF social employee Shelby Hewitt laid groundwork of false identities and complicated fictions of particular training wants and emotional trauma for six months, Suffolk prosecutors say.
It was all to con her method into highschool, the DA alleges.
“Posing as a child, the adult defendant enrolled herself in Boston Public Schools and attended school with children in the community, first as a ninth grader, and then later as a seventh grader at a different school within BPS,” the Commonwealth’s abstract of the case reads. “In reality, the defendant was a woman in her early thirties who had attended both college and graduate school and was employed as a social worker.”
Hewitt, 32, was arraigned on new fees in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday, following her prior arraignment in West Roxbury Court in July. The former social employee is charged with a number of counts of forgery, uttering false writing, id fraud, larceny over $1,200 and violating requirements of conduct for public staff.
On Tuesday, the courtroom declared no abuse was alleged in reference to the costs.
She pleaded not responsible to all fees Tuesday and was launched on $5,000 money bail and $50,000 surety.
Hewitt’s full motive for the difficult scheme hasn’t been made clear, although her protection has cited in depth psychological well being challenges.
The baffling plot, prosecutors laid out, began to take form nearly two years in the past.
“On December 6, 2021, the defendant took an initial step in her elaborate fraud by creating and purchasing the domain name @masstate.us from Go.Daddy.com, LLC,” the Commonwealth’s assertion alleges.
That day, the prosecution states, Hewitt created fictional social employee “Michael Kornetsky.” In March, she created a second, Michelle Delfi.
The groundwork took off from there, the assertion says, as she used the characters to enroll herself within the Walden Behavioral Treatment Center for an consuming dysfunction. She allegedly created confusion round her title and start day and pretended to be a child in DCF custody.
Under the Kornetsky title, Hewitt allegedly bought a “TracFone” quantity, in accordance with prosecutors. Around April 2022, the quantity despatched dozens of emails and a whole bunch of textual content messages posing because the defendant’s social staff.
These communications created a path for her aliases and “propagated an intricate–but false–narrative of an extremely traumatized child with significant special educational and emotional needs,” the assertion says.
From there, the Commonwealth states, Hewitt enrolled herself as a 16-year-old at Burke High, then requested a switch to Brighton High due to “concerns” with the Burke administration. She allegedly created quite a few faux DCF and courtroom paperwork to maintain the fraud going, which had been later reportedly discovered by investigators in copies and drafts in her bed room.
In June, Hewitt allegedly switched to English High, this time in seventh grade beneath one other alias as a 13-year-old, the prosecution acknowledged. One of Hewitt’s aliases was an actual scholar in DCF custody, reportedly unaware of Hewitt’s id theft.
Within a month, English High workers grew to become suspicious when her supposed guardian — allegedly Hewitt’s grownup roommate — tried to take her out of faculty and appeared into her paperwork, shortly unraveling the scheme. Hewitt was faraway from the college, BPS notified households on the colleges and police issued an arrest warrant.
Hewitt continued to be employed as a DCF employee from September 2022 to February 2023, prosecutors mentioned. Her wage throughout her most up-to-date DCF employment was $54,281, in accordance with the Commonwealth.
The defendant obtained her Bachelor of Science from Wheelock College in 2013 and an Education Masters from UMass Boston in 2016, the Commonwealth states. She initially labored for DCF from 2016 to 2017 and was rehired in 2021, resigning in February, 2023.
Hewitt’s trial is scheduled to start in Suffolk Superior Court on Sept. 9, 2024.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”