projo.com
RHODE ISLAND -- Two more people have been arrested, and 19 others are still wanted, for allegedly getting Rhode Island driver’s licenses that were falsified by two clerks at the state Division of Motor Vehicles.
The clerks had sent the licenses to dozens of illegal immigrants and suspected drug dealers who’d paid middlemen between $2,500 to $3,000 apiece to conceal their identity with a valid license, according to the state police. Some of the “customers” have since been rearrested on drug charges in various states — where their true identity was revealed by fingerprints — but others are on the run.
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The state DMV said yesterday that new security procedures have been put in place since the state police investigation broke on Wednesday. “At no time was there any breach of public information,” DMV spokeswoman Gina Zanni said yesterday.
However, there are questions about how the state came to employ a clerk whose own immigration status is in peril.
Dolores Rodriguez-LaFlamme, 40, of Providence, one of the two clerks arrested in the fraud scheme, had already been ordered deported. Her application for adjusted immigration status had been denied after a federal investigation discovered two fraudulent marriages, according to a state police affidavit. LaFlamme is appealing the deportation order.
Posted by tyne at October 13, 2007