BOSTON — A Brazilian national living illegally in Boston has pleaded guilty to his role in a sprawling driver's license fraud ring that churned out more than 600 fake IDs for undocumented immigrants across three states — and applied for more than 1,000.

Gabriel Nascimento De Andrade, 27, pleaded guilty on March 6 to one count of conspiracy to unlawfully produce and possess identification documents. He is the third defendant to go down in the case. U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman scheduled sentencing for April 9.

The operation, which ran from November 2020 through September 2024, was exactly what it sounds like: a full-service driver's license pipeline for people who couldn't legally get one.

Here's how it worked.

Nascimento De Andrade and his co-conspirators would collect cash from customers — undocumented immigrants living in states that don't hand out licenses to people in the country illegally — and do everything for them. They staged fake webcam photos so the customers wouldn't have to take the written permit test themselves. They forged driving school certificates, complete with fake signatures from school staff. They created phony utility bills to prove residency.

In one instance, on April 24, 2024, Nascimento De Andrade accepted $450 in cash from a customer in the parking lot of a Plymouth RMV branch. In exchange, he handed over a fake cable bill showing the customer lived at a Massachusetts address. The customer walked inside and used it.

Before July 2023, Massachusetts didn't allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. New York started issuing them to undocumented immigrants in 2019. The conspirators exploited both systems — shuttling Massachusetts-based customers to New York DMV offices in groups, handing them forged documents in the parking lot, and waiting while they went inside. When the permits came back, they were mailed to addresses in New York controlled by the defendants, who then handed them off to customers in person.

Then Massachusetts made it easier. In 2022, the state legislature passed the Work and Family Mobility Act, which allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain driver's licenses starting in July 2023. Mayor Michelle Wu publicly backed the law and urged voters to protect it when opponents forced a ballot question to repeal it in 2024. Voters sided with Wu. The law stayed.

Collectively, the co-conspirators applied for licenses for more than 1,000 customers, successfully obtained them for more than 600, and pocketed at least hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nascimento De Andrade faces up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000. He will be subject to deportation upon completion of his sentence.

Two co-conspirators remain.