Accused Cape Verdean killer tried to renew US passport while on the run, feds say

A Brockton man faces up to a decade in prison as feds say he applied for a new U.S. passport at an overseas embassy while he was on the run for murder charges in Cape Verde, but lying that he had lost it during Christmas dinner.

Johnny Brandao, 40, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Cape Verde, was indicted on one count of passport fraud this week after having previously been charged with criminal complaint for the same offense on May 7, for which he was arrested two days later. He will appear in federal court in Boston on the charge at an unscheduled date.

“It is alleged that on March 27, 2014, together with another defendant, Brandao shot an individual in the head using a .45 caliber revolver, took one million and five hundred thousand Cape Verdean Escudo, and then dumped the victim’s body on the side of the road,” Special Agent Daniel Starr of the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service wrote in a May 7 affidavit supporting the charges.

“It is further alleged that on July 26, 2021, at approximately 5:00 AM, the defendant shot and killed another individual using a 9mm caliber firearm and threw the victim’s body over a cliff,” Starr continued.

Verdean authorities arrested him and ordered him detained pending trial, but by Dec. 12, 2022, he was released under the requirement that he check in with the court regularly and that his passports and ID card be confiscated, the affidavit asserts.

In a Verdean court document included as an exhibit in the case, a presiding judge there wrote that day that Brandao and another person “Were Banned from Leaving the National Territory and even ports.”

Instead, he fled and on Dec. 28, 2022, applied for a new passport at the U.S. Embassy Dakar in Senegal and allegedly described how he lost his old passport in this way: “I went out for dinner and the time I got back I hand (sic) lost my passport,” on Dec. 25, 2022.

INTERPOL issued a Red Notice, which is a request for worldwide l enforcement to be on the lookout for and provisionally arrest a person, for Brandao on March 8 of this year. By April 5, U.S. Customs and Border Protection records show that Brandao arrived in Boston from the U.S. Virgin Islands and had used his Massachusetts driver’s license for proof of identity.

He then allegedly started working the phones to try to expedite his passport application and in furtherance of that had said that he had travel plans to an unknown destination on May 8.