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MEMPHIS, Tenn.- Three of four men charged in a Tennessee driver's license fraud case pleaded guilty Monday in federal court. Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin, Khaled Odtllah and Sakher A. Hammad each admitted before U.S. District Court Judge Bernice Donald that they tried to obtain the licenses illegally. The fourth defendant, Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, was to appear in court Monday afternoon. Each of the four men, three from New York City and one from the Memphis suburb of Cordova, had ties to the Middle East. The men were charged with operating a scam in which driver's license examiner Katherine Smith would provide...

Five New York City men with ties to the Middle East were indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday for their part in an alleged scheme to fraudulently obtain Tennessee driver's licenses. In the indictment on one count of conspiracy to commit fraud, federal authorities shed no new light on the death of state license examiner Katherine Smith. Smith and the five men were charged in a Feb. 6 criminal complaint on an identical conspiracy charge. Smith died Feb. 10 in a fiery car crash on U.S. 72 in Fayette County, the day before she was to appear at a ...

Katherine Smith, a Memphis driver's license examiner who was arrested for selling Tennessee driver's licenses to 5 Middle Eastern men is apparently dead. Ms. Smith's family had not heard from her in two days when they received word that her car had been involved in a fatal one car accident near the Mississippi/Tennesse state line. The victim inside was burnt beyond recognition and the body was transported to the Memphis medical examiners office in an attempt to identify the body. At this point it is assumed that the body is indeed of Katherine Smith.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - A driver's license examiner and five others, including three alleged illegal aliens, were charged in a plot to buy phony Tennessee licenses for $1,000 apiece. According to an FBI complaint filed Wednesday, illegal aliens Mohammed Fares, Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin and Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad drove from New York to obtain licenses. The complaint said the trio were met outside a testing center Tuesday by Sakhera Hammad and Khaled Odtllah, alleged middlemen who filled out the necessary paperwork, charging them each $1,000. Testing center examiner Katherine Smith then issued the licenses under the names of Fares and two others, ...

A photo ID pass for Sept. 5 found on one of the men charged with fraudulently obtaining a Tennessee driver's license from a Memphis woman gave him access to the six underground levels of the One World Center building. But which tenant hired Sakher 'Rocky' Hammad, 24, to work on its sprinklers is lost, said Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Alan Hicks on Friday. Hammad told federal authorities that he was working on the sprinklers six days before the twin towers were brought down by terrorists, court testimony revealed this week. But Hicks said the Port ...

Flaming death no accident, FBI says Gasoline found on clothes of license examiner By Bill Dries dries@gomemphis.com The fiery death of a driver's license examiner at the center of a federal fraud investigation was not an accident, an FBI agent said here Wednesday in federal court. "Katherine Smith obviously lived two lives, maybe more. She may have had other things going on in her life that may have led to her death." - Karen Cicala Federal and state investigators found gasoline on the clothes Katherine Smith was wearing when she died Sunday in a car crash on a stretch of ...

The fiery death of a driver's license examiner at the center of a federal fraud investigation was not an accident, an FBI agent said here Wednesday in federal court. Federal and state investigators found gasoline on the clothes Katherine Smith was wearing when she died Sunday in a car crash on a stretch of U.S. 72 in Fayette County, FBI agent J. Suzanne Nash told U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Daniel Breen. Nash also testified that investigators found evidence of some kind of accelerant in the burned-out interior of Smith's car. "Katherine Smith obviously lived two lives, maybe more. She may ...

By Bill Dries, dries@gomemphis.com A Memphis woman allegedly at the center of a scheme to sell fraudulent Tennessee driver's licenses was identified Tuesday as the person whose burned body was found early Sunday in the wreckage of a car in Fayette County. L icense examiner Katherine Smith was probably alive when her car hit a utility pole on U.S. 72 near the Mississippi state line, said Tennessee Highway Patrol Lt. Col. Mark Fagan. Smith, 49, died the day before she was due to appear before a federal magistrate judge for a detention hearing on a charge of conspiracy to obtain ...