A Big Apple driving school paid off DMV examiners to fraudulently fast-track driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants — even if they had no clue how to drive, Staten Island prosecutors said Tuesday.
T&E Driving School in Queens took cash from Chinese immigrants—many of whom didn’t even speak English — and paid off a crew of Department of Motor Vehicles employees on Staten Island to illegally obtain driver’s licenses, District Attorney Michael McMahon said at a press conference.
The crackdown, dubbed Operation Road Test, took down the ring in a joint investigation with state investigators and the US Department of Homeland Security, prosecutors said.
“Our investigation found that T&E Driving School blatantly flouted the laws and procedures that are necessary to ensure the public safety on the road,” George Ioannidis, assistant special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New York said Tuesday.
“As alleged T&E utilized social media and strategic advertising to Target exploited members of the Chinese community and guaranteed individual driver’s licenses regardless of their immigration status, language, and even their ability to operate a vehicle,” he said.
“Moreover these individuals were those who did not speak or understand English and may have believed that they all were taking necessary and legitimate steps.”
T&E owner Weixian Tan, secretary Weiwen Tan, employee Winnie Yang and school road test driver Wenfeng Yang set up the scam by paying off DMV examiners Aji Idicula, Tianna Rose Andolina and Edward Tarik Queen, according to the indictment.
The examiners would then rubber stamp the wanna-be drivers without even having them take a road test.
McMahon said the scam extends beyond the seven named indictments, with two dozen suspects in custody and another indicted DMV employee not identified in the 49-page document.
“The numbers, as we go through this investigation, as we go through the materials that have been seized, we think that we are going to find hundreds if not thousands of people that have been part of this scam,” the prosecutor said.
“The number of tests given by an individual examiner can be about 1,500 a year,” he said. “Two out of the three examiners have been working for four or five years, so we think this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
In a statement, McMahon called the pay-to-drive scheme a “corrosively corrupt” operation centered on DMV workers who “brazenly betrayed their oaths of office.”
The defendants were arraigned on a slew of fraud, tampering and theft charges and were released — the charges are not eligible for bail under the state’s controversial 2019 criminal justice reforms.
However, they were ordered to surrender their passports.
