A Brockton man faces as much as a decade in jail as feds say he utilized for a brand new U.S. passport at an abroad embassy whereas he was on the run for homicide fees in Cape Verde, however mendacity that he had misplaced it throughout Christmas dinner.
Johnny Brandao, 40, a twin citizen of the U.S. and Cape Verde, was indicted on one depend of passport fraud this week after having beforehand been charged with prison criticism for a similar offense on May 7, for which he was arrested two days later. He will seem in federal courtroom in Boston on the cost at an unscheduled date.
“It is alleged that on March 27, 2014, together with another defendant, Brandao shot an individual in the head using a .45 caliber revolver, took one million and five hundred thousand Cape Verdean Escudo, and then dumped the victim’s body on the side of the road,” Special Agent Daniel Starr of the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service wrote in a May 7 affidavit supporting the costs.
“It is further alleged that on July 26, 2021, at approximately 5:00 AM, the defendant shot and killed another individual using a 9mm caliber firearm and threw the victim’s body over a cliff,” Starr continued.
Verdean authorities arrested him and ordered him detained pending trial, however by Dec. 12, 2022, he was launched beneath the requirement that he test in with the courtroom recurrently and that his passports and ID card be confiscated, the affidavit asserts.
In a Verdean courtroom doc included as an exhibit within the case, a presiding decide there wrote that day that Brandao and one other individual “Were Banned from Leaving the National Territory and even ports.”
Instead, he fled and on Dec. 28, 2022, utilized for a brand new passport on the U.S. Embassy Dakar in Senegal and allegedly described how he misplaced his previous passport on this method: “I went out for dinner and the time I got back I hand (sic) lost my passport,” on Dec. 25, 2022.
INTERPOL issued a Red Notice, which is a request for worldwide l enforcement to be looking out for and provisionally arrest an individual, for Brandao on March 8 of this 12 months. By April 5, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data present that Brandao arrived in Boston from the U.S. Virgin Islands and had used his Massachusetts driver’s license for proof of id.
He then allegedly began working the telephones to attempt to expedite his passport utility and in furtherance of that had mentioned that he had journey plans to an unknown vacation spot on May 8.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”