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Brazilian national in Malden sentenced after failing to disclose involvement in 11 murders in Brazil
Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury in February 2025.
A Brazilian national residing in Malden was sentenced to 16 months in prison Thursday in federal court in Boston for lying on his asylum application and at an immigration hearing.
Local News
Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho, 31, was indicted by a federal grand jury in May 2024 and pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury in February 2025.
De Abreu allegedly lied about his involvement in a November 2015 incident that has become known as “The Slaughter of Curió.” As part of the Ceara State Military Police, which De Abreu joined in 2014, he participated in “a mass killing event of primarily young people,” U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley’s office said in a release.
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Eleven people, mostly teenagers, were killed and many others seriously injured and tortured, the office said. Brazilian authorities charged 45 individuals, including De Abreu, who applied for a United States non-immigrant B2 visitor visa after being released pending trial in May 2017.
Having said he had never been arrested or convicted for any offense or crime, De Abreu’s application was approved and he traveled to Miami in 2018. In January 2020, while applying for asylum, he was asked if he had ever been accused, charged, arrested, detained, interrogated, or imprisoned in any country other than the U.S., and again said no.
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During an immigration hearing in February 2024, De Abreu testified that he had never lied to immigration officials and that he had left out this information because he had not yet been arrested. He was convicted of 11 counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and four counts of physical and mental torture in June 2023 in the First Court of Fortaleza, Ceará and sentenced to 275 years and 11 months in prison.
Following the completion of his 16-month sentence, De Abreu is subject to deportation.
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