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A former Pennsylvania licensing examiner who already faces federal charges of selling fraudulent commercial driver's licenses has also been charged by state prosecutors for selling passenger vehicle licenses.
Pennsylvania officials have filed charges against 56 suspects who allegedly participated in the driver's license scam.
The investigation focused on former PennDOT licensing examiner Robert Ferrari Sr., a PennDOT employee from May 1995 through April 2000. Ferrari has been charged with 56 counts of tampering with public records or information and 56 counts of unlawful use of a computer.
The charges allege that from May 1998 through February 2000, Ferrari, in his role as a licensing examiner, provided fraudulent driver's licenses to 54 individuals, all of whom were also charged. He was also charged with supplying licenses to two defendants who have been previously charged.
Ferrari allegedly received between $150 to $1,000 per fraudulent license he provided.
The Attorney General and State Police investigation of Ferrari has helped lead to federal charges being filed against 19 separate suspects who allegedly obtained fraudulent commercial driver's licenses from Ferrari. Because the men were of Middle Eastern descent, the charges got national attention in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. However, officials have discovered no link between the scam and terrorist groups.
Those charges, which were filed in late September and early October, are being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in part, because it is a federal crime to obtain a fraudulent CDL license.
Officials say Ferrari could produce a fraudulent driver's license by requiring the applicant to fill out a PennDOT form that certified that they held a valid license from another state. Ferrari allegedly would alter the applicant's date of birth or social security number, circumventing the checks and balances in the PennDOT computer that are programmed to detect duplicate licenses.
Ferrari also allegedly dealt with middlemen, who paid Ferrari a fee and brought groups of people to him for fraudulent licenses. The middlemen allegedly made a profit by charging individuals a much higher fee than they paid Ferrari.
