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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 ...

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Feb 16, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Shortly before 1 a.m. last Sunday, witnesses saw flames erupt from the back seat of a 1992 Acura Legend as it crawled along a two-lane road skirting farm fields in the little Tennessee town of Piperton. The driver breathed in the flames, her lungs searing, as the car veered off the road and came to rest against a utility pole near the Mississippi state line. There were no skid marks or furrows in the grass to indicate the driver had hit the brakes. A witness rushed up and pulled ...

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 ...