A 32-year-old woman who once worked for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and is suspected of enrolling in three Boston high schools faces charges including identity fraud and forgery, according to Boston police documents.
An arrest warrant for Shelby Hewitt, of Canton, was filed in West Roxbury District Court Tuesday. Boston police have been investigating a woman who allegedly faked her credentials and was able to enroll in the schools.
It wasn't immediately clear if Hewitt had an attorney who could speak to the arrest warrant, which listed four charges of forgery, two of false writing and one of identity fraud.
She is a former employee of DCF who worked there as a social worker on and off between 2016 and this February, the agency has confirmed. She also worked at a counseling service.
A representative for Boston Public Schools declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.
The situation was made public last week, when Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper released a statement outlining the deception, calling it "a case of extremely sophisticated fraud." She said as soon as school personnel identified the irregularities with the student's enrollment, the case was referred to Boston police, "who are now undertaking a criminal investigation."
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The arrest warrant said the situation came to light on Wednesday, June 14, when the principal of English High School called police to investigate a child. Administrators had been concerned when a man came to school to say he was withdrawing his daughter over bullying, despite having just enrolled her the week before and with staff working to address it with the student.
The student was identified in the report as Hewitt, who'd been using the name Ellie Alessandra Blake. Worried about a possible custodial issue with her parents, school officials reached out to the district for her paperwork and discovered an error with one of her enrollment forms, the arrest warrant said.
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Its letterhead listed the "Department of Children rind Families," prompting them to call the social worker listed on the document, the paperwork said, but that worker didn't exist, prompting the 911 call.
The next day, state and local police on human trafficking teams conducted a search at an apartment in Jamaica Plain, court documents said. The search uncovered documents from her bedroom at the apartment that had been submitted to juvenile court and the Department of Children and Families, which were allegedly used to enroll Hewitt into Boston Public Schools as two different people.
The document said Hewitt lived at the Jamaica Plain apartment with two other people. The building is near English High School in Jamaica Plain.
In a letter to parents, Skipper said the woman as been "discharged and is being ordered to stay away from Boston Public Schools (BPS) facilities." She said "at various points during the 2022-2023 school year," the woman attended the Jeremiah E. Burke High School, Brighton High School and English High School using the student transfer process and enrolling under different names.
City officials have raised concerns about how an adult posing as a child would have been able to be enrolled in Boston Public Schools.
Mayor Michelle Wu called the incident "extremely disturbing" in an interview on WBUR's "Radio Boston" Monday. She had said the families and students who might have come into contact with the woman are still being interviewed, along with school leaders and others.
"If someone told me that an adult, decades removed from being in some of these age-appropriate settings, was back in school, it's concerning," Wu said.
She said there was no evidence any students were harmed, but investigators were still digging into the situation.
"Of course there's shock and frustration," Wu added. "[But] it seems that everything that BPS could do, they did right along the way."
She said the investigation has also shown that the woman took advantage of resources meant for Boston students, and said examples will be made public as the investigation unfolds.
"The types of supports this person used, or activities they participated in, it all has costs attached to it. There are resources being deployed that are intended to give every child every possible opportunity in front of them and are meant for our children and our students."
NBC10 Boston's Kathy Curran and Mary Markos contributed to this report.
