, based on a pile of real documents that belong to someone else. U.S. Diplomatic Security Service, an arm of the State Department, has pursued about 2,000 passport fraud cases yearly working with law enforcement in 15 countries. These prosecutions reveal the complexities and cruelties of passport fraud, a crime that has become far more difficult to pull off as official IDs become increasingly high tech.
Guedes pleaded guilty to making a false statement on a passport application and impersonating a U.S. citizen. Federal prosecutors agreed to drop an additional charge of entering a secure airport area with fake documents. But the Brazilian airlines rejected him, Guedes told the judge, because he was too old and not classically handsome. After overstaying a tourist visa in the U.S., he rekindled the idea of trying to be a flight attendant in the U.S., which was more accepting of gay men. His supervisor at a pizza joint he was working at told Guedes he could help him get the papers he needed to pursue a job with an airline.
Forty-two years later on what would have been the boy’s 47th birthday, a flight attendant with that same name on his ID was stopped by customs officials at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. At Bush Airport in September, Guedes identified himself as William Ericson Ladd. An official warned him it was a federal crime to lie to him. Guedes said he was born in the United States but was raised by his missionary parents in Brazil.