Thread: Fake license scam leads to arrest in N.Y.

Fake license scam leads to arrest in N.Y.

12:31 PM EST on Thursday, November 8, 2007

By Amanda Milkovits
Journal Staff Writer

An illegal immigrant wanted for breaking into a house in New Jersey, tying up a 12-year-old girl and stealing about $200,000 worth of jewelry was arrested Tuesday in the Bronx — with a fraudulent Rhode Island driver’s license allegedly made for him by a Registry clerk.

Like 27 other people accused of obtaining fraudulent Rhode Island licenses in a recently uncovered scam, Lisandro Taveras, 28, had reasons to want to hide his identity, the Rhode Island State Police say. More than a third of those accused are, like Taveras, charged with crimes of violence or drugs, or are illegal immigrants — or both.

Taveras had a criminal record that includes larceny and receiving stolen property in New York and New Jersey in 1997 and 1999. Then, in late 1999, he and some accomplices posed as flower delivery people to break into a house in New Jersey, the home of a couple who sold jewelry to shops in the Bronx, the police say.

The robbers bound and blindfolded the couple’s young daughter, led her around the house at gunpoint, and forced her to show them to the safe where her parents kept the jewelry, according to a report in The Record, a newspaper in Bergen County, N.J.

Taveras and the others were later arrested. Taveras was convicted of several felonies connected to the home invasion, including threatening to kill, criminal restraint, robbery, burglary and possession of a firearm, said Rhode Island State Police Capt. Stephen J. Lynch.

Taveras took off on the last day of his trial for his role in the home invasion, the state police said.

Six years later, Taveras had a new name and new identity. On Sept. 9, 2006, Taveras got a Rhode Island driver’s license as Roberto J. Rodriguez, age 22.

The state police say Taveras’ new license was issued by Dolores Rodriguez-LaFlamme, one of two former registry clerks who’ve been arrested in a driver’s license scam connected to the Pawtucket office of the Division of Motor Vehicles. LaFlamme recorded the new license as an exchange for an old New York state license — which never existed, state police say.

The police in New York arrested Taveras as he tried to elude them on a fire escape in the Bronx, Lynch said. He was wanted for the fraudulent license, but when the police checked his fingerprints, they found he was also wanted in the home invasion in New Jersey, Lynch said. Taveras is also an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic and subject to deportation, Lynch said.

Fifteen people have already been charged in the license scam, including two DMV clerks, an alleged middleman and 12 others who allegedly received the fraudulent licenses.

LaFlamme, 40, of Providence, and Soraya Santiago, 42, of Pawtucket, had worked together at the DMV as clerks since 2000. The two women were friends and, at times, worked next to each other. The state police say the two women were instrumental in drafting new valid state driver’s licenses for people who paid $2,500 to $3,000 to middlemen for false identities.

The state police and federal agents in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Florida are still searching for a middleman and 16 people who allegedly obtained licenses through this scam. They have the names and addresses on the licenses, but they believe at least some of the identities are false. The only part that’s real is the license photo and the person’s fingerprints.

www.projo.com

He was probably in NY waiting it out to get himself a DL courtesy of King Spitzer.