Posted on 01/25/2006 3:09:33 PM PST by Warren_Piece
Four people have been indicted for participating in a conspiracy to bribe Tennessee Department of Safety driver license examiners, and two others have been charged with accepting the bribes in exchange for issuing driver licenses and certificates.
Bryan Guess, Shelia Robertson, Shun Gao, who is also known as Gordon, and Syed Abbas Parvez, also known as Andy, are charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.
Bryan Guess, the owner and operator of Winchester Driving School, and his former employee Shelia Robertson, were charged with paying Teresa Jones more than $5,000 in bribes during the period Jones worked for TDOS. Jones, who worked at the Murfreesboro driver license station, is accused of accepting more than $5,000 in exchange for helping people obtain Tennessee driver licenses and Certificates For Driving, even when those people had not satisfied all the requirements for obtaining the license or certificate.
The indictment alleges that Jones accepted about $20 in cash for approximately 1,000 Winchester Driving School students who obtained licenses or certificates from May 2004 through March 2005.
The indictment also charges Bruce Conklin, a current TDOS employee at the Murfreesboro driver license station, with the same charges that Jones is facing.
Teresa Jones now works for Bryan Guess at the Winchester Driving School. Guess is also charged, along with Shun Gao, with paying Conklin more than $5,000 in bribes. The indictment alleges that Conklin accepted about $9,200 in cash payments from July 2005 through January 2006 from an unnamed employee of Guess.
Syed Abbas Parves, an alleged illegal alien who lives in Georgia, is charged in the indictment with transporting another illegal alien and helping him remain in the United States by obtaining an illegal Tennessee license. The unnamed illegal alien is a Pakistani citizen, and Parves is accused of paying more than $1,000 in exchange for a third party certificate from Winchester Driving School, fake proof of residency documents, and a Tennessee driver license for the man. Bruce Conklin is charged with accepting the money and issuing a driver license to the illegal.
The Winchester Driving School had a contract with the State of Tennessee to participate in a program that allows private parties to administer the written portion of the Tennessee driver license examination and the road test. Each driving school participating in the Cooperative Driver Testing Program must sign an agreement that prior to giving the written and road test to a student, the school will provide that student with 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours of on-the-road driving instruction to the student.
Once the student completes the program and passes the written and road test, the school issues the student a third-party certificate to present to a Tennessee Department of Safety driver license station. The driver license station is supposed to verify the student's identity and residency documents, and make the student take a vision test, and then issue a driver license or Certificate For Driving to the student.
One part of the conspiracy alleged in the indictment said the Winchester Driving School would, for a fee, provide its students with third-party certificates without requiring the students to complete the required thirty-six hours of instruction.
Shun Gao is alleged to have paid about $32,510 in cash in exchange for third-party certificates from Winchester Driving School, and Guess is alleged to have accepted about $37,300 in cash for third party certificates provided by Winchester Driving School from August 2005 - December 2005. During that same period, Conklin is alleged to have issued licenses to about 50 clients of Shun Gao who presented Conklin with third-party certificates from Winchester Driving School.
Three other individuals have already been prosecuted in connection with the investigation. Jose Alberto Alicea-Huertas pleaded guilty in May 2005 to making false statements to a special agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Blanca Sanchez Tovar, formerly a TDOS employee at the driver license station in Gallatin, also pleaded guilty in May 2005 to accepting bribes in return for issuing Certificates For Driving to approximately 50 people who had not satisfied the requirements to obtain the certificate legitimately. Tovar admitted to accepting about $400 per fraudulently-produced certificate from her co-defendant, Javier Guzman.
Guzman pleaded guilty in September 2005 in connection with the bribes he paid to Tovar in exchange for the certificates.
Operation Crooked Highway was a joint investigation by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Criminal Investigation Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division. U.S. District Attorney Jim Vines and acting Tennessee Department of Safety Commissioner Gerald Nicely announced the indictment at a news conference Wednesday.
Ping anybody who needs a Tennessee driver's license.
ping
Back in July, a woman from NJ was filling two passenger vans every other week for trips to TN for drivers licenses. She and her boyfriend (and business partner) provided the transportation, translators, local addresses (homes with TN addresses) and counterfeit birth certificates. Did it for ten months before getting arrested. Charged $950-$1000 per person.
Just this past week, a 35-year old Indian national was arrested using shell consulting companies to get hundreds of Pakistani and Indian nationals help to illegally enter or stay in the US. The feds confiscated more than $5.5 million dollars. The activity was going on at least a year, but officials think it's gone on much longer than that.
I'll take 70!
it's the end of the world as i knew it...
Psst! You got money?
Haunting reminder of the 2001 Katherine Smith DMV murder case in Memphis shortly after 9-11.
btt
No wonder the 9/11 terrorists had drivers licenses from dozens of states. We have crooks working in the DMVs all over the country who will sell out their countrymen for a few bucks.
I've also heard (could be an urban myth) that Indians scam their way in provide false info to credit card companies run up the bills and then skip back to India. This from a friend who had some transient Indians living in the townhouse next to him.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
What ever came of that? Was anyone arrested, who killed her?
Related stories *here*:
Lawmakers To Take Closer Look At Corruption Scandals
...and they should all be breaking rocks in Kansas...
The ghost of Katherine Smith lives!
Thanks for the ping!
Can't find my Tenn license scandal ping list!
Still an open mystery on Smith, no?
Still an open mystery on Smith, no?
Far as I know. I've been out of the state for a while, but a pal there has been keeping me up to speed on the TN Waltz and other stories as they break.
Very strange goings on in Tennessee as ther are in Oklahoma, specifically Norman and the OU bomb incident.
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