Mario Cesar Dos Santos Jr., a 50-year-old Brazilian national living illegally in the United States, charged between $400 and $450 per person for a certificate he promised would make them immune to deportation. Each training seminar attracted 30 to 45 participants. He held multiple sessions.

None of them were immune. Including him.

Dos Santos created an organization he called the "Chaplain Emergency Management Agency" — CEMA — and installed himself as president. The outfit came with a website featuring an altered Department of Homeland Security seal, social media accounts, and a group chat that ballooned to over 750 members as of August 2025, when federal investigators began looking into the operation. He sold counterfeit DHS and FBI identification cards alongside the immunity certificates, plus branded merchandise — clothing, badges, and stickers bearing official DHS and FEMA seals.

He wasn't just selling fake documents. He was running a full-service counterfeit federal agency, complete with branded merch.

Dos Santos also falsely claimed his organization was accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and the American Council on Education. The customers apparently didn't check. To be clear, what Dos Santos was selling was a laminated promise from a man who had no legal right to be in the country that the federal government would leave you alone — for $450.

The operation unraveled when Dos Santos sold his merchandise to a confidential informant, who reported the scheme. ICE has now ordered him deported, and he faces up to 20 years in federal prison with sentencing scheduled for December 18.

The layering here is something. An illegal alien impersonated a federal agency. He sold fake federal credentials to other illegal aliens. He told them those credentials would protect them from the enforcement agency whose seal he was counterfeiting. And the buyers — themselves in the country illegally — paid hundreds of dollars for a piece of paper that had exactly the same legal weight as the immigration status they were trying to protect: zero.

Not the Bee, which reported the story, filed it under both "Scam" and "Deport." Hard to argue with either tag.

The scheme also reveals something about the market Dos Santos was exploiting. Seven hundred and fifty people in a group chat, seminars pulling in dozens at a time, customers paying nearly $500 each — that's a population of illegal aliens who understood they were deportable and were desperate enough to buy protection from a man whose own credentials were as fraudulent as theirs. The demand for fake immunity tells you exactly how many people knew they had no legal right to be here and were looking for a workaround.

Dos Santos built a business model on the fear of enforcement. The enforcement caught him anyway.

His sentencing is December 18. The 750 members of his group chat did not receive immunity.