Posted on 05/14/2010 11:46:37 PM PDT by XHogPilot
An employee of the Fullerton office of the California Department of Motor Vehicles was among four arrested Thursday in a title-washing scheme, department officials said.
In a separate license-fraud scheme, five other DMV employees conspired with a middleman to illegally issue drivers licenses, charging $350 to $6,000 to process the applications fraudulently, the DMV said. Those employees haven't yet been arrested, Huber said.
The fraudulent licenses were acquired by people who had trouble passing a driving test or who lacked the documentation needed to obtain a license legally, Huber said.
In a separate case, Gonzalo Garcia, 40, a license registration examiner at DMV's Hollywood/Cole office, was arrested on four felony counts each of alleged illegal access of DMV computers and falsification of public records. He was being held in lieu of $100,000 bail, the DMV said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
California DMV Employee Arrested for DL/ID Fraud, Jan 14, 2010
CA DMV Employee Felony Arrest Drivers License Bribes, Jan 14, 2010
California driver's licenses for sale at Oakland DMV, no questions asked, Aug 24, 2003
CA DMV, FBI Investigators Break up Employee Ring, Aug 4, 2005
CA Department of Motor Vehicles employee arrested, Aug 19, 2009
etal
ping
Gonzalo Garcia- Amish.
They should get life!
Administrative leave with pay?
A ring of DMV employees are accused of taking bribes and giving driver’s licenses to people who should never have been allowed on the road.
State investigators say employees from three local DMV offices took bribes and gave out licenses to scammers and handicapped elderly drivers with vision problems.
******
An employee of the Fullerton office of the California Department of Motor Vehicles was among four arrested Thursday in a title-washing scheme, department officials said.
Angelina Nanette James, 42, who worked at the DMV’s Fullerton field office, was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail, as were three employees of the DMV’s Los Angeles/Hope Street office, the DMV said in a news release. The others are Taneika Mashay Lathan, 22; Shavon Renae Shorter, 25; and Kimberly Nicole Sadler, 30, the release said.
The title-washing scheme involved luxury vehicles such as Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillac Escalades, said Greg Huber, a DMV internal affairs commander. People would buy vehicles using auto loans. Then, with the help of the four DMV employees, they would get a fraudulent title in which the lien-holding bank was removed, Huber said. The people would then take out new loans against the vehicles and pocket the money, he said.
In one case, a vehicle was used as collateral for loans six times before the banks caught on, Huber said. Approximately 10 people not employed by the DMV where arrested by the California Highway Patrol in connection with the scheme, he said.
The four DMV employees are being charged with conspiracy, grand theft, illegal computer access, bribery and use of false documents to conceal resident status, the DMV said.
Treason!
Gonzales Garcia, I’ll be durned!
This will make the price of getting a fraudulent license and pink slip even higher.
But in a different 2005 case, the DMV criminals were in fact suspended WITH pay. "DMV, which has suspended the four employees with pay, has increased its internal security procedures to prevent future scams"...
I have suspected for at least 20 years that people in the CA DMV offices were giving out fraudulent licenses to illegalls. As for the auto title scams going on at the L.A. Hope Street office, I have had to deal with that office and the employees I encountered were all pieces of work. They had major attitude and were not at all helpful. A few were wearing SEIU T-shirts when I was there a few times last summer. I am not at all surprised.
2 Texans accused of planning to sell counterfeit IDs
NORTH BERGEN, NJ -- (AP) 07/21/06---The Pelcastre brothers were a walking threat to national security -- expert document forgers who, for a few thousand dollars, could give anyone a new identity, authorities said. (ED. They sell drugs to get the money to buy fake documents.)
When police stumbled across the Pelcastre brothers, the men had turned a Tonnelle Avenue hotel room into a business office and were readying a massive cache of fake Social Security cards for delivery to a local identity broker, authorities said.
The brothers, Angel, 31, and Jorge, 34, both of Dallas, were a "one-stop shop" for a myriad of government documents, including birth certificates, Social Security cards, driver's licenses for any state in the country including passports and resident alien cards, said NJ state police Capt. Al Della Fave.
"Can you imagine if a terrorist were able to get their hands on this stuff?" Della Fave said. "They'd have free passage throughout the country." Note that Mexico is the global staging area for entry across US borders.
A task force including NJ state troopers and officers from both the Bergen and Hudson county prosecutors' offices happened upon two cars bearing Texas plates in the parking lot of the hotel. Authorities wouldn't identify the hotel by name for fear it could hinder cooperation from other hotels in future investigations or spark retribution.
The Corporate Outreach Task Force, formerly the Hotel Motel Drug Interdiction Task Force, regularly runs checks on motor vehicles in area motels. Members of the task force began watching the cars, a Chevrolet Impala and a Pontiac Firebird, and followed the brothers to an office supply store in a nearby shopping center, where the men purchased computer supplies, said state police Sgt. Stephen Jones.
Officers then followed the brothers to a self-storage facility in Secaucus, where they loaded several boxes from a storage unit into one of the cars, Jones said. One of the men stood lookout, which heightened police suspicion, he said. Authorities approached the men when they returned to the hotel and questioned them separately, Jones said. The brothers consented to a search of their cars, hotel room and the storage facility, he said.
Police recovered laminating sheets with built-in security features, pages of blank documents waiting for fake names and information, finished documents, computers and software to create the fake IDs, Jones said.
All told, the haul was worth about $500,000 on the street, Della Fave said. Police also recovered $6,000 in cash, which was the first payment from a fake document broker for a shipment of 500 Social Security cards, Della Fave said.
"They were aggressively selling to brokers," he said. "This isn't like selling driver's licenses to individuals. These were multiple layers of high-level documents."
The brothers were being held in jail without bail on charges of possessing fraudulent documents and conspiracy to sell fraudulent documents. Federal charges are also pending against them, said state police Detective Sgt. Cesar Huaman, a member of the task force.
what is the point of the DMV again?
Its seems the government of Calif thinks DMV's sole purpose is to collect revenue for the state (and its "freelancing" employees).
Well, that last is a dream. Whoever heard of anyone being sentenced to consecutive terms for multiple convictions in the last 40 years?
To harass US citizens and coddle illegals.
Well, at least SOME Californians are making a buck or two. /s
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