A social worker has been accused of posing as a teenage student in order to enroll in three local high schools for an entire year.
Shelby Hewitt, 32, has been charged with identity fraud and forgery after administrators at English High School in Boston, Massachusetts, spotted several inaccuracies on her paperwork.
Hewitt, who has a counselor’s license until 2025, attended three Boston public schools from September 7 to June 14 this year, according to prosecutors.
Police have given no information about why Hewitt would pose as a teen to attend high school.
She allegedly asked pupils at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School to call her ‘Daneilla,’ and also attended Brighton High School during the same period.
At English High school, she apparently went by Ellie Alessandra Blake.
According to court documents, she used forged documents to enroll in the district, including fake Department of Children and Families documents.
Police reportedly found five forged documents at Lowell Juvenile Court in the names of people referred to as DBH and EAH, which matches the initials for the name Hewitt allegedly used at Burke High School and English High School.
Police have requested an arrest warrant but Hewitt has not been arrested yet, per the criminal complaint.
A search warrant was executed at a Jamaica Plain home Hewitt shared with the two people who allegedly posed as her parents in the fake documents.
Hewitt is also charged with two counts of ‘uttering false or forged records, deeds or other writings’ – meaning she used forged documents to enroll in the district.
She faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of forgery.
Hewitt’s cover was blown after multiple Burke students were shown a yearbook photo of the social worker from her days at Sharon High School and started to notice the holes in her everchanging story.
But at first, students just thought she was a lonely newbie. ‘I thought that she was 16, 17 – at least [that’s] what she told me – and she was super smart,’ Burke student, Janell Lamons, 15, told the Boston Globe, who sat with the fake student during lunch.
‘Whenever we needed help with math, she would help us during math class.’ But now students and parents are wondering why Hewitt did it.
‘What was her intent? What did she get out of it?’ Templar Kinney, parent to 16-year-old student Isaiah Price wondered. ‘I find it disturbing.’
Hewitt used her background in social work to help weasel her way in, known that by claiming she was a foster child, the school would have to immediately enroll her under federal law – which does not require the waiting period for documentation like a typical enrollment.
At one point, Hewitt told students her parents died from a drug overdose, but then later claimed her father was in prison, that she was homeless, and even claimed to be an immigrant from Colombia.
‘She did say that she does speak Spanish, but I never heard her speak Spanish,’ Lamons told the Globe.
Despite claiming to be a foster child, students would often catch her talking to her ‘mom’ on the phone and claiming her foster mother was ‘controlling.’
Students also started to questioned her outfits, which looked too old for a high schooler, and noticed she drove a car to school and looked too old to be in her teens.
‘It was always in the back of my mind,’ Price told the Globe. ‘It was low-key like she was lying about something.’
Hewitt reportedly told students she had been held back to cover up for her aging appearance and for the fact that she was taking freshmen math and history.
