A Salvadoran national and convicted sexual offender living under an assumed name in East Boston was sentenced in federal court last week for failure to register as a sex offender as required under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).
Melvin Velasquez, 34, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV to eight months in prison and five years of supervised release. In November 2018, Velasquez pleaded guilty to one count of failure to register as a sex offender. Velasquez was charged by criminal complaint in August 2018 and has been in federal custody since his arrest.
According to court documents Velasquez was convicted in New York in 2007 of one count of rape in the third degree and sentenced to eight months in prison and eight years of probation. As a condition to his probation, Velasquez was required by SORNA to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction where he resided or worked. Velasquez, who was also determined to be illegally present in the United States, was deported to El Salvador following the completion of his sentence.
Sometime after, Velasquez returned to the United States, assumed a false identity, and was living and working in Eastie.
In May 2018, Velasquez, using his alias,
was arrested and charged with various motor vehicle violations. Velasquez’s
fingerprints were obtained and found to match the prints in his alien file
stemming from his 2007 New York rape conviction. Law enforcement subsequently
discovered that Velasquez had not registered, as required by law, with the
Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board.