Eliot Klienberg, Palm Beach Post, Sep. 17, 2009
In the end, prosecutors say, it was sloppiness and vanity as much as anything that tripped up state examiners who investigators believe took perhaps millions in bribes to issue driver licenses to at least 1,500 illegal immigrants.
Ten people - four examiners at the license office in Delray Beach and six others who conspired to recruit them - have been or soon will be arrested, including two examiners who were charged when the ring was broken in May and who now face new conspiracy counts, the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s office said.
{snip}
Assistant State Attorney Alan Johnson, Palm Beach County’s public corruption prosecutor, said the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is now working to invalidate the illicit licenses.
Examiners took fees ranging from $1,200 to $2,500 per license, witnesses told investigators.
An affidavit produced by the Florida Highway Patrol, which investigated the alleged conspiracy for the department, doesn’t give the total take, but the math suggests more than $1 million and as much as several million dollars.
{snip}
Also, while the examiners took home less than $20,000 a year, they “openly and notoriously exhibited expensive personal items such as automobiles, home purchases, designer clothing, jewelry and accessories of an apparent cost far in excess of their means,” the report said.
Some of the predominantly Haitian, Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants might have wanted licenses so they could stay in the country, get a job, open a bank account and not live in fear that a simple traffic stop would land them in jail with the next stop their home country, prosecutors say.
Others might have wanted them to snare lucrative jobs as drug mules. With a valid license, they would not have to worry that, if stopped with illicit cargo, their cars would be searched.
{snip}
Examiners kept count of how many customers they handled and each would meet after work, away from the bureau, with one of the outside ringleaders to be paid, the report said.
When investigators stopped one conspirator, Alex Adrien, 42, of Delray Beach, in April, a search of his car uncovered 20 counterfeit immigration forms, several blank forms, and nine fake passports along with ledgers containing dozens of names, with notations ranging from $480 to $1,200. Adrien later was deported to Haiti.
{snip}
The four examiners under arrest.
Original article
(Posted on September 18, 2009)
Comments
Here is what our politicians are broadcasting to the world.
“The U.S. has no laws, come over illegally and get away with whatever you want, the nation is yours for the taking. We will not stand in your way.”
If you think this is exaggerating, then you are obviously a hopeless cause or have no ears and eyes to see and hear with.
Affirmative action has its costs - not just the obvious cost to Whites of being denied government employment, but the cost of employing corrupt and incompetent officials.
The current, though disputed, tally is 63 driver’s licenses obtained by the 19 9/11 highjackers.
When [9/11 hijackers] Hanjour and Almihdhar showed up at DMV Express [in Virginia], they apparently already had two forms of ID—a passport and a legal visa would have been accepted—-because they did not submit DL6s to establish their identity. But they did submit DL51s, to “prove” their Virginia residence. Martinez [an illegal alien day laborer from El Salvador who they’d hired to help them get driver’s licenses] allegedly certified the forms for both of them.
On the forms, the men claimed to live in an apartment complex on the 5900 block of Leesburg Pike—one block down from the strip mall. “This address did not belong to either Hanjour or Almihdhar,” [FBI agent] Gomez wrote in his affidavit, “but was rather the address that appeared on Martinez’s Virginia identification card. Martinez no longer lived at the address, but had in the past.”
With their newly minted photo IDs, the two suspected terrorists drove back with Martinez to Culmore. “At the 7-Eleven they all got out of the van,” wrote Gomez. “Hanjour and Almihdhar went inside the store and appeared to use the ATM machine. They then came out, paid Martinez $100 in cash for his efforts, and left in the van. Martinez did not see them again.”
But the Virginia DMV had not seen the last of these two. Hanjour and Almihdhar were now qualified to certify the legal residency of other terrorists.
That is exactly what they did the next day—at a DMV about three miles from the Pentagon on South Four Mile Run in Arlington.
Wrote Special Agent Gomez: “DMV records also show that Hanjour and Almihdhar used the address Martinez gave them on August 1, 2001, to complete DL51 forms for [9/11 hijackers] Majed Moqed (Moqed) and Salem Alhazmi (Alhazmi) on August 2, 2001…”
Three other suspected hijackers showed up at the Arlington DMV that very same day. They, too, needed witnesses to help them secure Virginia IDs. But unlike Hanjour and Almihdhar, they needed not only DL51s, to establish a residence, but also DL6s, to establish their identities. That meant they had to have the help of a witness, a notary, and a lawyer…
…Herbert and Lopez-Flores [also illegal alien day laborers] got into Herbert’s car and drove to an attorney’s office on Columbia Pike in Falls Church. The three Arab men followed in their van…
One of the Arab men in the office that day was Ahmed Alghamdi, one of the suspected hijackers of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the World Trade Center towers. Lopez-Flores vouched for his DL51 form, on which Alghamdi falsely claimed to live on Edison Street in Alexandria.
Abdul Alomari was another one of the Arab men in the law office that day. He is a suspected hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11, which also crashed into the World Trade Center towers. Alomari claimed to live on Buchanan Street in Arlington. “Oscar Armando Diaz,” whom the FBI believes to be Villalobos, certified Alomari’s residency on the DL51. (The actual resident at this location was Villalobos’ cousin.)
Villalobos, who told the FBI he believed the men to be Pakistani or Iraqi, added an interesting note. “Villalobos said the attorney then came out of his office and signed the forms as well,” wrote Special Agent Weidner. “Here, Villalobos noted that the attorney conversed with the ‘Pakistanis’ in ‘their language.’ After this conversation, each ‘Pakistani’ man paid the secretary $35, and then all returned to the Arlington DMV office. Once back at the DMV office, the ‘Pakistani’ men paid Villalobos $50 for his assistance and then went into the DMV to get identification cards.”
When the FBI later showed Villalobos photos of the suspected September 11 hijackers, he identified five of them—Hani Hanjour, Salem Alhazmi, Majed Moqed, Khalid Alghamdi and Abdul Alomari—as being at the Arlington DMV that day. “These identifications,” Special Agent Weidner wrote, “were later confirmed by Virginia DMV records which show that all five men did in fact conduct various transactions relating to Virginia identifications cards at the Arlington DMV on August 2, 2001…”
Given the massive number of AFFIRMATIVE ACTION hires at state DMV’s it would be even EASIER for invaders to get them now.
“Also, while the examiners took home less than $20,000 a year, they “openly and notoriously exhibited expensive personal items such as automobiles, home purchases, designer clothing, jewelry and accessories of an apparent cost far in excess of their means,” the report said.”
Less than $20,000 a year take home? That is why they took the bribes. There are only 2 choices for the pay of civil servants.
(1) Pay a decent living wage. Since these are life long careers, a decent family living wage, not a just out of school living with parents living wage.
(2) The third world way. Pay starvation wages and look the other way when the civil servants solicit bribes.
Florida choose the third world way. Adults will have children. Adults don’t want to spend their lives living with their parents or in a crowded roommate situation. Adults generally need to support a car to get them to work.
I’m a militant White realist. But in this case, I fully support the examiners right to supplement the starvation wage that does not cover both rent and commuting expenses with bribes.
You realize they are all eligible for section 8. But their income precludes eligibility for food stamps for their kids.
100 years ago, police officers were very low paid, in some cases making less than city janitors. They were also totally corruot.
When cities started paying police a decent wage in the 1950’s, the levels of corruption went way down and continued going down as their wages were raised to where they could buy a home and support their families in decent middle class style.
Where does the State of Florida expect their DMV examiners to live on less than $20,000 per year? Their cars or vans? Their parents? Relatives? Or 6 roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment?
Florida choose the third world way, starvation wages supplemented by bribes.
Four years ago I was a Sgt. with the CT DMV. We had the same situation…in fact the perps were the same complexion as these perps..er..accused. It this the result of the “value free education” that has been promoted by sime liberals? Or it is a continued repudiation of the “values of the dead, white, European males”?..Values that taught hard work, honesty, generosity, and education would bring rewards for yourself and your children. Blacks are being relegated to the plantation of welfare, sloth, distain for education and a culture of “getting over” and then claiming victimhood. This is truley tragic with the lose of talented, intelligent people denied opportunity, not because of skin color but because they lack basic skills.
Also, while the examiners took home less than $20,000 a year, they “openly and notoriously exhibited expensive personal items such as automobiles, home purchases, designer clothing, jewelry and accessories of an apparent cost far in excess of their means,”
And this typical black conduct surprises whom? Reminds me of Richard Pryor in the superman movie where he steals all of the 1/2 cent deposits to his account then buys a Lamborghini as Gene Hackman wonders where his half pennies went. BLING!
Gee. They look a lot like the corrupt ACORN employees we’ve seen recently. And have the same ethics and respect for law as those corrupt ACORN employees. Gosh, do you think it could be a racial thing, this penchant for crime, corruption, contempt for law, etc???????
“Less than $20,000 a year take home? That is why they took the bribes. There are only 2 choices for the pay of civil servants…”
Margaret, unless they were part time, that $20K figure is a lie. Regardless, they would have done the same thing had they made $50K per year.
