Police in the Brazilian state of São Paulo have uncovered that a judge spent 23 years working under a false identity – and a distinctly British one.
Born José Eduardo Franco dos Reis – a name fairly typical in a country once colonised by Portugal – he entered law school and served for over two decades as a judge using the false name Edward Albert Lancelot Dodd Canterbury Caterham Wickfield.
In 1995, having just passed the public examination to become a judge, Wickfield claimed in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper that he was the son of English aristocrats, born in Brazil but raised in the UK until the age of 25.
What police and public prosecutors are now calling a fraud was only recently discovered and came to the public’s attention following a piece by the news outlet G1.
Since then, Brazilians have been left stunned, trying to grasp how a judge could sustain such an elaborate deception for so long, especially with such an unusual name.
In October, identifying himself as Wickfield, he visited a government office in São Paulo to renew his ID card.
All his documents listed his “British” names, but the birth certificate registration number matched that of a Brazilian man named Dos Reis. When police cross-checked the data – and fingerprints – they confirmed it was the same individual.
According to what is known so far, Dos Reis began presenting himself as Wickfield in the early 1980s.
Police say he falsified his birth certificate, entered the University of São Paulo’s law school and began working as a judge in 1995, remaining on the bench until his retirement in 2018.
When police uncovered the alleged fraud, he was summoned for questioning. This time identifying himself as Dos Reis, he claimed that Wickfield was his twin brother, given up for adoption as a child to a noble British couple.
He gave no further explanation for the names, though a piece by the Folha de S Paulo newspaper noted that they appear inspired by literature – such as the Round Table’s Lancelot or Mr Wickfield, the lawyer in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
A public prosecutor charged Dos Reis with identity fraud and using false documents. Court officers have been unable to locate him, so he has yet to be formally summoned to respond.
Last Friday, the São Paulo Court decided to suspend his pension payments as a retired judge – in February alone, he received R$166,413.94 (more than $28,000).
