Posted on 10/12/2007 7:02:24 AM PDT by got_moab?
Two more people have been arrested, and 19 others are still wanted, for allegedly getting Rhode Island driver’s licenses that were falsified by two clerks at the state Division of Motor Vehicles.
The clerks had sent the licenses to dozens of illegal immigrants and suspected drug dealers who’d paid middlemen between $2,500 to $3,000 apiece to conceal their identity with a valid license, according to the state police. Some of the “customers” have since been rearrested on drug charges in various states — where their true identity was revealed by fingerprints — but others are on the run.
As the state police search for the suspects, they are still trying to determine how the licenses were used — whether used in financial transactions, to buy guns, or exchanged in a different state for another license. In several cases, the licenses were used by people who’d been deported and illegally reentered, or who were wanted on drug warrants.
Anastacio Segura, 34, who also uses Martinez as his surname, was found at a work site in Boston Wednesday night with a fake Rhode Island license, said state police Capt. Stephen Lynch. He’d already been deported to Mexico, but had illegally reentered the country, Lynch said. Daniel Liranzo, 41, was arrested yesterday in New York City with a falsified Rhode Island license, Lynch said. Now, both Liranzo and Segura are being held for deportation. The two clerks, one of the alleged middlemen, and eight other alleged customers were also charged this week.
The state DMV said yesterday that new security procedures have been put in place since the state police investigation broke on Wednesday. “At no time was there any breach of public information,” DMV spokeswoman Gina Zanni said yesterday.
However, there are questions about how the state came to employ a clerk whose own immigration status is in peril.
Dolores Rodriguez-LaFlamme, 40, of Providence, one of the two clerks arrested in the fraud scheme, had already been ordered deported. Her application for adjusted immigration status had been denied after a federal investigation discovered two fraudulent marriages, according to a state police affidavit. LaFlamme is appealing the deportation order.
Some who know LaFlamme from her political action in the Latino community said they knew about her immigration issues. LaFlamme had volunteered on a number of election campaigns for Democrats, including those for U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, and City Councilman Nicholas Narducci Jr.
Yesterday, Narducci said he learned LaFlamme wasn’t a citizen last year when she tried to run for a seat on the Ward 4 Democratic committee. She had posted her campaign on a page on Narducci’s Web site — touting her employment at the Registry and that she’d come to this country from the Dominican Republic in 1996, and borrowing Narducci’s election slogan “A New Beginning.” But Narducci said another candidate eventually ran for the seat when it was discovered that LaFlamme was ineligible to vote. She was put on the Ward’s community action committee instead.
State Rep. Anastasia Williams, D-Providence, a close friend of Laflamme, said yesterday she didn’t know what type of visa LaFlamme entered with, or how long it would have allowed LaFlamme to remain in the United States legally. Williams said that LaFlamme “had gotten married to someone here, while she was still in good standing.”
“If she was illegal, she would not have been such an open person” in the community, said Williams. “She would have been trying to hide, if she had something to hide.”
When LaFlamme was hired by the state DMV in 2000, she would have gone through the state personnel system, which conducts a background check and identity check including an applicant’s Social Security number, said Zanni.
It’s unknown whether the DMV knew that LaFlamme had been ordered deported. Zanni declined comment on the employment status of LaFlamme or Soraya Santiago, 42, who is the other clerk accused of being involved in the license scheme.
The state police said the scam went like this:
The person who wanted the license would use an assumed identity to get a legitimate Rhode Island identification card. The person would give the ID card and the money to one of the middlemen, who would send the card off to the clerks at the DMV.
The digital picture on the ID card would be transferred onto a new Rhode Island license, and the new licenses were sent in the mail from the DMV. LaFlamme and Santiago recorded the new licenses as exchanges for out-of-state licenses, the state police said.
By doing this , the ring was able to circumvent the security procedures that the state DMV had put on its new licenses and state identification cards five years ago. After complaints that the licenses and identification cards were easy to copy, the state DMV changed to using digital photos and several security “codes” on the licenses that made them extremely difficult to duplicate, Zanni said.
The state identification cards resemble drivers’ licenses, but they are produced at the DMV for people who want identification cards but don’t need to drive. The photo ID cards are used by people in the same manner as drivers’ licenses — to prove their identity for banking purposes, to buy alcohol, or identify themselves for traveling on airplanes, for example. About 211,000 residents hold state ID cards, which are renewed every 10 years, Zanni said.
Dims are trying to raise the bar with their illegal allies. Voting by illegals is widely supported by Dims. No Dims want to elect Dims. If an elected Dim is deported, can the elected Dim govern in absentia? Maybe we should just give members of the Mexican Congress votes in the US Congress.
This happened in Indiana a few years back. Some 8 BMV employees are doing time in Michigan City, Indiana state prison, these days.
So now I can expect people to start wearing clothes that say “FIBI”?
Come on now. They are simply doing jobs that real American Citizens won’t do. Tip of the melting iceberg.
Rhode Island requires renewal of drivers licenses every 5 years, but the ID's only have to be renewed every 10 years?
Seems to me that there's a bigger potential problem with the ID's than the licenses.
Worse - and this pertains to every Amnesty of the last 2 years, notice that these visas are handed out with no provisions whatsoever for identitfy verification.
So while the story above appears ominous as a law enforcement problem (fake driver;s licenses and fake IDs), think of how every Shamnesty bill provides brand-spanking new United States identification documents based solely and exclusively upon the applicant's assertion.
The applicant for a Z Visa or an Ag visa or whatever visa, can fabricate whatever identity they choose, since there is in fact no provision for identity verification through the applicant's native country. Indeed, the source countries will either have substandard identification systems themselves, or in the case of Mexico, an obsession with proper documentation but no willingness to help us identitfy their citizens in here in the U.S.
This problem applies to EVERY immigration and visa plan of the last several years to provide U.S. identity docs to persons of unknown origin, age, education, and criminal background.
“However, there are questions about how the state came to employ a clerk whose own immigration status is in peril.”
Ahhhhhhhhh, no....
Here come da judge, Here come da judge, and saved by the bell etc
The SSN checking directive is on hold indefinitely...
Golly, this family values, hard working undocumented fraud would have been caught and deported...
Phew.............
Disgusting!
ping
With all these illegals using every alias under the sun, do they even remember their birth names?
Yeah, Spitzer needs to hire crooks : )
>>“If she was illegal, she would not have been such an open person” in the community, said Williams. “She would have been trying to hide, if she had something to hide.”<<
Here’s a news flash: They are not hiding. Many of them are in our face, and our laws, flag, and loyalty mean nothing to them. What matters is political power, and no means are too sleazy to obtain it.
Legal Hispanics and illegal Hispanics all in on this scam ....I hope they get lots of prison time then get booted.
Mexican corruption continues ad nauseum, with no one at the helm to stop it.
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