Recent observations suggest that the number of relativistic degrees of freedom in the early universe might exceed what is predicted in the standard cosmological model. If even a small, percent-level fraction of dark matter particles are produced relativistically, they could mimic the effect of an extra realistic species at matter-radiation equality while obeying BBN, CMB and Structure Formation bounds. We show that this scenario is quite naturally realized with a weakscale dark matter particle and a high-scale "mother" particle within a well-motivated 3-3-1 gauge model, which is particularly interesting for being consistent with electroweak precision measurements, with recent LHC results, and for offering a convincing explanation for the number of generations in the Standard Model.