WORCESTER — For 25 years, a man living in Worcester used a dead U.S. citizen's name to build an entire life in Massachusetts. He got state ID cards. A Social Security card. He went to prison for cocaine trafficking and assault with a gun. He got out, applied for food stamps, and started collecting.
Nobody stopped him. Not even the state employee who flagged his Social Security number as belonging to a dead person.
Federal prosecutors say the man is actually a 57-year-old citizen of the Dominican Republic, believed to be in the country illegally. He stole the identity of a Puerto Rican-born U.S. citizen sometime around 2001, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. That person died in 2006.
The defendant kept using the name.
In September 2012, he was convicted in Worcester Superior Court on two charges: assault and battery with a dangerous weapon — a gun — and trafficking cocaine. He got 8 to 10 years on the gun charge. 11 to 15 on the cocaine. All under a dead man's name. Nobody caught it.
He walked out of state prison in January 2022. Within months, he applied for SNAP benefits through the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance.
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And here's the part that should make your blood boil.
A DTA employee reviewing the application saw that the Social Security number matched a deceased person. They wrote it right in the file: "Death match ??? — reviewing with supervisor."
Then Massachusetts approved him anyway.
From April 2022 through February 2026, the man collected approximately $12,623 in SNAP benefits. All under a dead person's identity. All while in the country illegally. All after a decade behind bars for violent crime and drug trafficking.
He was finally arrested on April 2, 2026. He appeared in federal court in Worcester and was ordered detained.
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He now faces two federal charges: unlawfully obtaining SNAP benefits, which carries up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and false representation of a Social Security number, which carries up to five years and another $250,000 fine.
Not an isolated case
This wasn't a one-off. The month before, federal prosecutors in Massachusetts charged nine people with collectively stealing $943,000 from public assistance programs — including roughly $150,000 in SNAP benefits alone.
Governor Maura Healey announced on April 6 that the state will begin rolling out chip-enabled EBT cards to fight SNAP theft. That addresses card skimming. It does nothing about identity fraud — the kind where a state employee catches it in real time and the system approves the benefits anyway.
A DTA worker literally wrote "Death match ???" in the file. The system worked. The people running it didn't.
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