Sunday, February 12, 2006

DMV representative took cash for phony licenses
Torrance worker and her middleman plead guilty in case involving illegal immigrants. She faces 16 months in prison.
By Larry Altman, Daily Breeze


A worker at the California Department of Motor Vehicles office in Torrance took tens of thousands of dollars in cash bribes to hand out phony drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants, authorities said Tuesday.

Toi Shamara Kingsbury, a motor vehicle field representative at the Torrance office from 2001 to 2005, has pleaded guilty to bribery charges. Kingsbury, 31, of Los Angeles, was arrested Nov. 9 at a restaurant where investigators watched her commit a "hand-to-hand exchange involving cash for fraudulent drivers' licenses," DMV spokesman Mike Miller said.

A "middleman," Ronald Kirk, 35, also pleaded guilty. Prosecutors said he brought people wanting licenses to Kingsbury.

Orange County Auto Theft Task Force agents first suspected Kingsbury of a crime when they discovered she had switched a vehicle identification number on an auto in the DMV's computer system, Miller said. That auto-theft case is pending in Orange County.

Undercover DMV investigators soon began watching Kingsbury work at the office at 1785 W. 220th St.

"They witnessed blatant fraud," Miller said.

The DMV released few other details about the case, but prosecutors said Kirk escorted illegal immigrants to the DMV office, where Kingsbury processed driver's license applications.

The day she was arrested, Kirk passed more than $26,000 to Kingsbury, authorities said.

"The scam involved selling drivers' licenses to people who didn't necessarily have the documents to get them," said Deputy District Attorney Max Huntsman, the prosecutor on the case. "We believe she made a lot of profit off this operation."

The case remains under investigation, and it was not clear how many fraudulent licenses Kingsbury processed and for how long.

Kingsbury has pleaded guilty to receiving bribes and is scheduled to be sentenced April 7 to 16 months in state prison and ordered to pay a $135,000 fine, the DMV said.


"That fine was intended to take away a bunch of money she made illegally," Huntsman said.

Kirk is scheduled to be sentenced to six months in county jail for bribing a ministerial officer, Miller said.

In Kingsbury's case, the licenses created were genuine to the person who applied for them. In a separate case, prosecutors have charged four people, including a former DMV worker in Bellflower, with a money-making operation that stole licensed drivers' identities and created duplicate drivers' licenses with new faces and names on them.

Three people working out of an auto shop in La Puente brought customers to Steve Cervantes, who matched actual license holders' descriptions to his applicants. The applicants were then provided paperwork in the DMV parking lot to obtain "duplicate" licenses, Deputy District Attorney Leonard Torrealba said.

The duplicate licenses contained new names and photographs, but the other information belonged to motorists who had no idea their identities were stolen.

Cervantes and three "brokers" allegedly charged $2,000 to $3,600 for a license, Torrealba said.

The applicants included illegal immigrants without Social Security numbers, a requirement for a license. Some of them drove trucks for a living, Torrealba said.

In one case, an applicant had a prior conviction for driving under the influence, he said.

"We estimated that Cervantes did 183 of these between Jan. 1, 2004, and Aug. 12, 2005," Torrealba said.

Cervantes and Joe Hernandez, Ana Hernandez and Leonardo Valenzuela are scheduled for a pretrial hearing Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Torrealba said.

Each has pleaded not guilty to bribery charges.

The DMV reportedly also is investigating a case of fraud involving an employee at the San Pedro office on Gaffey Street.END

CA Goverment Code 6200: Every officer having the custody of any record, map, or book, or of any paper or proceeding of any court, filed or deposited in any public office, or placed in his or her hands for any purpose, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years if, as to the whole or any part of the record, map, book, paper, or proceeding, the officer willfully does or permits any other person to do any of the following:
(a) Steal, remove, or secrete.
(b) Destroy, mutilate, or deface.
(c) Alter or falsify.


CA Penal Code 115.(a): Every person who knowingly procures or offers any false or forged instrument to be filed, registered, or recorded in any public office within this state, which instrument, if genuine, might be filed, registered, or recorded under any law of this state or of the United States, is guilty of a felony.