Six persons have been indicted in Louisiana on federal charges they sold passing grades and approvals to applicants seeking to obtain a class A Commercial Driver’s Licenses without them ever taking the necessary tests.The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana announced the indictments last week.
The key to the CDL scheme was that Louisiana law allowed portions of the tests needed to acquire a CDL to be administered by third parties. The overall agency in charge of the testing process was the state’s Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC).
But the third parties needed, according to the indictment, to “meet the same qualifications and training as state examiners and give the same tests that would otherwise be given by the state.”
The indictment charges that the conspiracy involved bribes to get applicants past both the knowledge test needed to obtain a learner’s permit, and then the skills test necessary to receive the actual CDL. The skills portion of the CDL test could only be acquired after a commercial learner’s permit had been acquired.
Restaurant owner had friends at OMV
According to the indictment, Mahmoud Alhattab, identified in the indictment as a restaurant owner, bribed two people who worked in the Donaldsonville office of the state’s Office of Motor Vehicles (OMV). The two employees, Jenay Davis and Shakira Millien, are accused in the indictment of having completed the knowledge tests necessary for the learner’s permit on behalf of the applicants Alhattab was assisting, and getting paid by Alhattab in return.
But the pair of OMV workers were not confident enough in their own ability to ace the test, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office. They “performed internet searches to find the answers,” according to the prepared statement from the office announcing the indictments.
Needed a skills tester
But that only got the applicants past the learner’s permit phase. The indictment said Alhattab also bribed Christopher Bryan Burns, who owned a truck driver training company, and Jonathan Parsons, who worked for Burns, to report to the Commercial Skills Test Information Management System (CSTIMS), which is funded by FMCSA, that the individuals passed the skills test. (The indictment notes that the servers that operated CSTIMS were not based in Louisiana, which makes any crimes connected to it an interstate offense).
The indictment spells out the developments in the scheme:
- Alhattab “collected money and information” from people looking to obtain a class A CDL
- That information was provided to OMV employees Davis or Millien who entered incorrect answers to get Alhattab’s applicant a learner’s permit, and reported that it had been secured.
- The two were paid for their assistance by Alhattab, funded by the bribe paid by the applicant.
- That information was provided to Burns or Parsons, the operators of the truck driving schools. The two of them entered a false passing grade into the CSTIMS system and got paid for that.
- The sixth person indicted, Marline Roberts, worked for Burns’ company. She also would put false information into CSTIMS.
- The person who funded Alhattab received a class A CDL.
All six defendants were hit with at least one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud with some of them being charged with that count twice. Alhattab, Millien and Parsons were all charged with four counts of bribery in connection with a program funded by the federal government. Burns, Davis and Roberts all were indicted on one count of bribery in a federally-funded program.
Among the specific dollar amounts in the indictment, the U.S. Attorney reports that an applicant seeking Alhattab’s help paid about $6,500 for his services, and that Parsons told Roberts he would pay her $400 for reporting that an individual had passed the skills test.
The indictment lists three people, identified as Individual-A, B and C, as having used Alhattab’s services to obtain their class A CDL. It says the conspiracy started no later than August 2020 and ran until February 2024.
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