MIAMI, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 A Miami man originally from South Africa pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft after stealing a dead toddler’s identity to gain citizenship 40 years ago. <\/p>\n
In addition to the identity theft, he was also convicted on October 15 for making a false statement on a passport application.<\/p>\n
According to evidence presented during the trial, 68-year-old Vasudevan Pillay first came to the United States in 1985 with a six-month tourist visa.<\/p>\n
See also: Thanksgiving travel begins: FAA predicts busiest day with 52,000 flights<\/a><\/p>\n When Pillay arrived, prosecutors say Pillay stole the identity of a U.S. citizen who had died decades earlier as a toddler.<\/p>\n Somehow, Pillay obtained the victim’s birth certificate and used his social security number to get a Florida driver’s license in the victim’s name.<\/p>\n U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Qui\u00f1ones for the Southern District of Florida commented on Pillay’s decades-long ruse:<\/p>\n For nearly forty years, this defendant lived under a lie. He stole the identity of a deceased child, defrauded the government, and tried to pass himself off as an American citizen. This conviction restores accountability and reaffirms that the rule of law still matters.<\/p>\n Pillay faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for the false statement on a passport application and a mandatory two-year prison term for aggravated identity theft, which must run consecutively to any other sentence imposed, per court documents.<\/p>\n Find more ways to stay up to date with your latest local news. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a> to get the day’s top headlines delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our YouTube channel<\/a> for the biggest stories and can’t miss video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 A Miami man originally from South Africa pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[38676,38677,38675,27014,1841,38678,123,125,124,37445],"class_list":{"0":"post-65400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-aggravated-identity-theft","9":"tag-citizenship","10":"tag-false-passport","11":"tag-identity-theft","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-legal-consequences","14":"tag-miami","15":"tag-miami-headlines","16":"tag-miami-news","17":"tag-south-africa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}