By Tom Bailey Jr.
baileytom@gomemphis.com
A state employee charged with selling Tennessee driver's licenses failed to appear in federal Magistrate Court Monday morning, and federal officials said she may have died in a car wreck.
Katherine Smith, who worked at the driver's license testing station on Summer Avenue, was due in court for a detention hearing.
But federal prosecutor Tim DiScenza told the court that family members said Smith had not been seen since Saturday night. He said there was a strong likelihood that she had died early Sunday in a one-car wreck just north of the Mississippi state line on U.S. 72. The wreck was in Fayette County about three miles outside Collierville.
Witnesses told the Tennessee Highway Patrol that about 15 minutes after midnight the four-door car left the road, went through a ditch and struck a telephone pole, snapping it.
The single individual in the car was burned beyond recognition. The body was sent to the Shelby County medical examiner for identification.
Monday afternoon, Highway Patrol officials said they did not know the cause of the crash and did not have an identification of the victim.
Smith was one of six people charged last Wednesday by federal officials with conspiracy to get Tennessee driver's licenses under false pretenses.
Also charged were Mohammed Fares, Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin, Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, Sakhera Hammad and Khaled Odtllah.
Memphis FBI agents, acting on a tip from an informant in New York, arrested the men outside the Summer Avenue testing station last Tuesday.
According to an affidavit, federal agents and Tennessee Highway Patrol investigators Katherine Smith had filled out four driver's license applications based on forms filled out by Odtllah.
After her arrest, Smith told investigators that she had issued approximately seven other licenses for Odtllah, according to the affidavit. February 11, 2002