A 28-year-old woman posed as a 17-year-old to attend a New Orleans-area high school during the last school year, saying she wanted to better learn the English language, according to the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office.

During a Wednesday press conference, Sheriff Greg Champagne and St. Charles school superintendent Ken Oertling addressed the issue, explaining how the woman reportedly managed to dupe school personnel for an entire school year.

The sheriff said in June 2022, Martha Guiterrez-Serrano’s mother, Marta Elizeth Serrano-Alvarez, enrolled her daughter in Hahnville High School in Boutte, La., a suburb of New Orleans, using a counterfeit birth certificate from Honduras which listed Guiterrez-Serrano’s age as 17.

With no school transcripts available, school personnel followed procedure and enrolled Guiterrez-Serrano in the 9th grade, which Oertling said was standard procedure under Louisiana law.

Champagne said he had seen a photo of Guiterrez-Serrano and her youthful appearance definitely aided in the ruse.

“I saw the photograph and I can tell you she looked like a young teen. I’m not surprised at all, based on appearances alone, that she was accepted at face value as being the age on the birth certificate,” the sheriff said during Wednesday’s press conference.

Guiterrez-Serrano reportedly rode the bus to school, but otherwise had little contact with other students outside the classroom. She did not participate in any extracurricular activities and there are no records of any disciplinary issues or inappropriate interactions with other students.

“She was in school. She minded her own business. She did her schoolwork. She caused no trouble. She was not a disciplinary problem. She violated no laws in the community where we had to deal with her,” Champagne said. “She did nothing inappropriate at all, she merely attended school.”

“We have no information there was any nefarious purpose other than the young women wanted to become proficient in English and perhaps further her education, which I think we can all be sympathetic with.”

In May, the school district received information that an adult might be posing as a Hahnville student. Officials began investigating and contacted the sheriff’s office on May 29 — after the school year had ended.

Champagne said in addition to uncovering the school ruse, investigators learned Serrano-Alvarado, 46, had been in the U.S. for several years, while Guiterrez-Serrano joined her mother in 2021. Both entered the country legally, although he said Serrano-Alvarado’s visa had expired, which he said was not uncommon.

Although Champagne admitted it’s “not the crime of the century,” Guiterrez-Serrano and her mother have each been charged with one count of Injuring Public Records.

The sheriff noted while Guiterrez-Serrano’s quest to better herself was admirable, there are better — and legal — ways to do it, calling the two women’s actions “a bad decision.”

“There are other options available for people in those circumstances. Everyone should get an education. There are ESL (English as second language) programs available, there are GED programs available. They may not have been as convenient as a public high school two miles away, but those options are available,” Champagne said.

“Certainly, those are better options than falsifying official government documents.”

Oertling said, going forward, school personnel would be given additional training to recognize potentially fraudulent documents.