3 get jail for fake driver's license racket (California)

[alp227]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(09-09) 15:29 PDT NAPA --

A former state Department of Motor Vehicles employee in Napa and two other people were sentenced to jail terms today for their roles in a scam in which unlicensed drivers paid $500 to get fake driver's licenses, Attorney General Jerry Brown said.

Former DMV employee Rodney Wheatly, 46, of Fairfield, and Donald McGowan, 55, and Maricar Bazemore, 37, both of Vacaville, entered no contest pleas to a felony charge of unlawful access to a computer system for issuing about 20 phony driver's licenses.

Judge Gary Ransom of Sacramento County Superior Court sentenced Wheatly to a year in county jail. McGowan and Bazemore each received a six-month sentence.

The investigation began last year when a tipster reported that driver's licenses were being illegally sold at the DMV's office on Napa Valley Corporate Drive in Napa.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/09/BAMG1FBDCD.DTL

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$500 to get fake licenses? Wheatly must've been really desperate to get money for the DMV as California still doesn't have a budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. Oh, and I wonder if Lindsay Lohan bought one of those fake licences to make up for her suspension?

[dkf]

1. How do they know it was only 20?

[customerserviceguy]

2. Have they been busting

those who sell fake ID's out of car trunks to illegal aliens, too? Or do they just bust citizens for this?

[mackerel]

3. Napa is one of the better DMV offices too.

They busted a group in Stockton & Oakland a few months back.