Venezuelan migrant dad, 24, posed as Ohio high schooler, student athlete and tricked family into taking him in: cops

An adult Venezuelan migrant and father allegedly pretended to be a 16-year-old boy so he could enroll in an Ohio high school — and even played two sports with kids nearly a decade younger, according to police.Anthony Emmanuel Labrador Sierra is accused of falsely presenting himself as an unaccompanied minor and enrolling at Perrysburg High School, southwest of Toledo, in January last year — and tricking a family into taking him in, according to police.When he first contacted the school in November 2023, he allegedly claimed that he had been trafficked to the US from Venezuela and said his birthday was Dec.2, 2007, according to police documents seen by 13 ABC.However, he is allegedly a 24-year-old Venezuelan national who has children living in the US, according to prosecutors.He told school officials his name was Anthony Labrador, according to a letter sent from Perrysburg Schools Superintendent Thomas Hosler to parents and community members.Sierra was enrolled at the school for 14 months before school officials contacted the Perrysburg Police Division on Monday regarding possible fraudulent activity involving one of their students, police said in a statement on Tuesday.Cops opened a fraud case and assigned it to the Detective Bureau for investigation.“Through our investigation and working with U.S.

Customs and Border Protection and the Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it was discovered that Anthony Emmanuel Labrador Sierra, a 24-year-old from Venezuela, had used fraudulent documents to enroll in Perrysburg Schools, and was posing as a 17-year-old high school student,” the statement read.Sierra lived with a Perrysburg family after his guardianship was granted by the Wood County Juvenile Court, according to Hosler.The family became suspicious about Sierra’s real age and contacted the school, saying they had received information that he was, in fact, a 24-year-old man, Hosler’s letter read.On May 14, the mother of Sierra’s child alleged...