The dmv employees are the weak point in any drivers office, no matter how tough the
requirements, there will be some piece of crap that will sell an ID to the terrorists\illegals
the difference will be that the Real IDs will be considered valid for all purposes, what a bs deal

Eight charged in DMV bribe scheme
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/04/BAdmvscheme04.DTL
(08-04) 12:14 PDT Oakland (SF Chronicle) -- Eight people, including four employees of the state Department of Motor Vehicles office in Oakland, have been charged in a scheme in which some of the DMV workers allegedly accepted thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for providing driver licenses, identification cards and registration stickers for cars that did not pass smog tests, authorities said today.

Four of the defendants, including three DMV employees, appeared in U.S. District Court in Oakland this morning on charges that they accepted bribes to sell identification documents to non-U.S. citizens. All four were ordered to return to court Friday for further proceedings.

"The federal charges unsealed today allege that public employees accepted cash bribes to provide seemingly valid driver licenses to individuals not lawfully present in the United States," San Francisco U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said in a statement. "Upon learning of these allegations, federal and state law enforcement agencies aggressively pursued this investigation in an effort to identify all the employees engaging in such conduct."

The DMV employees who appeared in court were Brachelle Fifer, 43, Stephanie Davis, 37, and Leneka Pendergrass, 27, all of Oakland. They were immediately released from custody, and all three declined comment outside court.

Another DMV employee, Frances Aliganga, 53, of Fairfield and Veronica Rivera, 53, of Daly City were indicted on charges of conspiring to defraud the DMV. Rivera, who is not a DMV employee, allegedly served as a "broker" of fraudulently obtained documents.

From about November 2003 through June 2005, authorities said, Rivera recruited individuals who were living illegally in the United States and offered to sell them a California driver license or ID card for $3,000 to $4,500 each.

Rivera allegedly provided fraudulently obtained -- but real -- social security numbers that her clients could use in their DMV applications. After accepting approximately half of the bribe payment in cash, Rivera arranged for her clients to meet with DMV employee Aliganga, who along with Fifer, Davis and Pendergrass worked at the DMV office at 5300 Claremont Ave. in Oakland, according to the indictment.

Aliganga processed the clients' applications, provided them with temporary driver licenses and had valid driver licenses mailed to them, authorities said.

To bypass legal requirements, Aliganga entered into DMV computers information indicating that clients had provided proof of legal presence when no such documentation had been provided. Federal prosecutors said she entered fraudulent social security numbers for some clients and had driver licenses issued to clients who had not taken either a written or driving examination.

In return for her circumventing required steps and falsifying information, Aliganga received from Rivera a share of the cash bribe that each client paid to Rivera, authorities said. According to the indictment, Aliganga's and Rivera's scheme resulted in the issuance of more than 200 fraudulent California driver licenses and ID cards.

Fifer was charged with conspiring to commit fraud for entering false information into the DMV computer system to circumvent legal requirements, including proof of citizenship, to issue driver licenses to clients who paid cash bribes. She accepted $100 in cash each time she helped one of Rivera's clients get a license, and Aliganga also paid Fifer as part of the scheme, authorities said.

Davis and Shahid Hamid, 45, an Oakland video store owner who is not a DMV employee, were charged with selling vehicle registration stickers to individuals whose vehicles never passed a required smog test and selling California driver licenses to individuals who had taken neither a written examination nor a driving examination.

Hamid, sometimes in connection with another individual, then worked with and through DMV employee Davis, who processed the fraudulent vehicle registration or fraudulent driver license in exchange for a cash payment, typically $100 to $200 to bypass the smog requirements and $500 to issue a fraudulent driver license.

Pendergrass and non-DMV employees Keith Williams, 40, and Adrian Gomez Zepeda, 31, both of Oakland, were charged with providing California driver licenses and identification cards to individuals by illegally obtaining the identity of another person and issuing driver licenses to their clients that reflected the name and personal identifiers of another individual.

To execute the scheme, the two allowed their clients to circumvent various required DMV procedures, authorities said. Williams and Zepeda also allegedly recruited individuals willing to pay hundreds of dollars to obtain a fraudulent driver license or to register a vehicle that could not pass California smog requirements.

The fraudulent driver licenses and vehicle registrations allegedly were then processed by Pendergrass.

The background checks for DMV employees need to be more thorough.

Quoted: The background checks for DMV employees need to be more thorough.

and they need some mandatory LONG prison sentences for selling authentic IDs

Jail + loss of jobs & any pensions.

We wouldn't need real id/airport check/random subway checks/etc if we'd just SEAL THE EFFING BORDERS and DEPORT THE EFFING ILLEGALS!

Emissions inspection is a bigger joke and crime than what these ppl did.

It's funny that in Detroit, there's no smog inspection so you can drive a clunker... but since someone knows someone at the Big 3, you can get a slightly used car for dirt cheap with the right discounts.

But in places like NJ, NY, and CA, where not many ppl know someone related to Big 3 business... they practically force you to buy a new car every 10 years.

My 1981 Ford T-bird barely passed NJ safety inspection. They claimed my drum brakes were bad, and I had to replace a broken 194-lamp based sidemarker. Oh like a 194 lamp is going to mean the difference between someone seeing my car at night and not seeing it? My AA Maglite is brighter than that bulb!