It came crashing down in Houston

He was arrested in September 2021 at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport while boarding a flight. He was holding a phone with ‘Erics iPhone’ on the screen. Guedes pleaded guilty to making a false statement on a passport application and impersonating a US citizen. Federal prosecutors dropped a charge of entering a secure airport area with fake documents.

This week US District Court Judge George C Hanks Jr sentenced Guedes to the time he had already served in custody, one day short of seven months. He was also sentenced to one year of supervised release, after which he faces deportation.

At the hearing, Judge Hanks said he believed Guedes was truly anxious and remorseful about his conduct. He said he considered Guedes,

“a good man who basically made a very tragic mistake to fulfill his dream.”

Guedes was also ordered to undergo mandatory mental health treatment and take any medication the treating doctors prescribed. While the sentence could be seen as lenient, Guedes’ lack of a criminal record and stable US work history mitigated a harsher term in custody.

Eric Ladd was born in 1974 but died in a car crash in 1979. Guedes was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1972 and assumed Ladd’s identity in the mid-1990s. After overstaying his US visa, Guedes first began using a Social Security card in Ladd’s name and the trail of deception began.

That finally unraveled in 2021 when his most recent passport was flagged as suspicious, triggering an investigation. The birth date on Ladd’s death certificate matched the birth date in Ladd’s (Guedes) most recent passport renewal.

Fingerprints from his United Airlines background check matched Brazilian national identity documents and the game was up. Given his proven skills at forging documents, he was detained as a flight risk and held in custody until his sentencing this week.

A childhood dream and a child’s identity

While he admitted his crimes, he defended his actions as chasing a childhood dream of becoming a flight attendant. He told the judge he was rejected by Brazillian airlines because he was too old and not classically handsome.

His lawyer argued that this was a “crime of desperation” and Guedes had never used his fake ID for criminal activity or gain. Guedes said his sole intent was to pursue the career he had chosen and that he was truly sorry for what he did, and he knew it was not right.

Perhaps Guedes’s most honest and insightful comment came when he was arrested in September. He was reported as saying,

“I had a dream and the dream is over.”

For a novice, Guedes did an excellent job of fooling authorities for more than 20 years. After 9/11, aviation security was strictly enforced, so how did he slip through the net for so long?