Every so often a story comes along about a random adult who manages to return to high school by tricking everyone into believing they’re a teenager, but this one involving 32-year-old social worker Shelby Hewitt may just take the cake.

Shelby, also known as ‘Ellie Blake’, 13, and ‘Daniella Blake Herrerra’, 16, conned her way into three high schools in Boston, Massachusetts, and even tricked her therapist and partner into fostering her. She did all this for a year while also keeping up her full-time job as a social worker. What kind of Machiavellian genius are we dealing with here?!

Indeed, Shelby Hewitt put in a fantastic effort as a 32-year-old pretending to be a 13 and 16-year-old, and managed to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes for quite some time (well, apart from her bullies, but we’ll get to that). According to MailOnline, starting in December 2021, Shelby’s con went something like this:

– Created emails disguised as official Department of Children and Families’ accounts for 2 different fake social workers who claimed to work for 16-year old “troubled teen” ‘Daniella Blake Herrerra’ who struggled with anorexia (as a social worker, Shelby knows how that world works and so pulled this off easily).

– Had ‘Daniella’ admitted to the Walden Behavioral Treatment center, and enrolled into the Boston Public school system.

– Started classes at Jeremiah E. Burke High School (stayed there for 7 months)

– Transferred to Brighton High (stayed there for 2 months)

Now, here’s where she got careless and screwed the whole thing up completely…

– Transferred to English High School, where she switched to a new identity, “Ellie Blake”, and changed her age to 13 years old. 

– Got herself caught just one week later after having one of her fake social workers send a complaint to Ellie’s guidance counselor for being bullied for “looking like an adult”.

Shelby Hewitt wrote the following the e-mail, writing about herself (“Ellie”) in the third person:

‘Elle has a really bad day at school yesterday, cried all evening and doesn’t want to go back.

‘(Ellie) is really sensitive about people commenting on her face and how she looks older. It’s a huge trigger point for her.’

She further explained (as the counsellor) that “Ellie” suffered from a genetic medical condition that prematurely aged her, and claimed she was a vulnerable victim of child trafficking that now lived with a foster family. At this point, principal Caitlin Murphy realised certain aspects of the student’s story didn’t add up – most of all, the fake counselor’s email domain didn’t match the correct DCF address. Whoops.

And so the school called the DCF and of course found no one working there with that counselor’s name, and Shelby Hewitt’s run as a high school student was brought to an abrupt end. But what a run it was! Apparently she played on the girls’ basketball team, gossiped with friends half her age, handed in homework like everyone else, and even got herself fitted with braces to make it more realistic. You actually have to applaud that level of effort even it was an completely weird and deranged thing to do.

In the end though, the bullies were right. 13-year-old “Ellie” really did look like she was in her 30s, because she was in fact a 32-year-old woman named Shelby Hewitt. If she had only put up with their mean comments and jibes instead of complaining about them, she would probably still be living the high school dream as we speak.

Shelby eventually confessed to the con after she was busted, and told a reporter over the phone that ‘there is a reason’ she pretended to be a teen, but her attorneys told her to stay quiet during her ongoing case. She said the truth ‘will come out in time’ – so I guess we’ll wait with baited breath. Fair play to the bullies for sussing her out anyway.

For the Russian teacher who was fired after her students found a striptease video of her on Instagram, click HERE.