FBI says TX. DPS employee took bribes to fraudulently issue 215 trucker licenses

FBI says DPS employee in San Antonio area took bribes to fraudulently issue 215 trucker licenses

By Guillermo Contreras
Updated 7:04 pm CDT, Monday, July 8, 2019

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Photo: Guillermo Contreras / Staff

Marino Maury Diaz-Leon, 52, gets into a vehicle to be taken back to jail after a hearing in federal court in San Antonio on Monday, July 8, 2019. Behind him is co-defendant Fernando Guardado Vazquez, 40. The
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Authorities have uncovered a scheme in which a San Antonio-area state employee took bribes to issue more than 200 commercial driver’s licenses to people who didn’t take the required test.

The employee of the Texas Department of Public Safety commercial driver’s license division is believed to have taken tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to fraudulently issue 215 commercial driver’s licenses between January 2017 and June of this year, according to the FBI.

Authorities would not release the name of the employee nor the specific DPS office location.

Of the 215 commercial driver’s licenses in question, 197 went to Cuban nationals, 11 to U.S. citizens, one to a Dominican Republic national, one to an Ethiopian, one to an Iraqi, one to a Puerto Rican, one to a Ukraine national and two to Mexican nationals, FBI special agent Monroe Giese testified Monday at court hearings for two people charged in the case with conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

The two defendants are both truckers. Marino Maury Diaz-Leon, 52, of San Antonio and Fernando Guardado Vazquez, 40, of Austin, are legal U.S. residents of Cuban descent who offered bribes to the DPS employee, Giese testified.

“That employee was interviewed and he admitted to accepting bribes to falsely certify that people had passed their skills assessment test, when in fact they had not passed it or hadn’t even shown up for the test,” Giese testified.

The employee was suspended by DPS and is now cooperating with authorities, according to Giese. He has not been charged.

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Giese testified that a DPS audit in December 2018 found that the employee in question “had an unusual number of CDLs being issued.” An investigation by DPS and the Texas Rangers identified more than 200 license holders who had not been scheduled to take the skill test, which consists of an air brake safety inspection and a road test.

Applicants for CDLs are required to take the skill test in the same class and type of motor vehicle they plan to drive once obtaining the trucking license, according to testimony and information on the DPS website.

DPS officials didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.

Giese testified that the employee initially declined to help investigators, but then agreed to cooperate and assisted agents in video and audio-recorded sting operations in which Vazquez and Diaz-Leon separately delivered bribes in exchange for CDLs for other people.

During the sting operation, the DPS employee delivered temporary paper CDLs to Vazquez or Diaz-Leon but the final product never was mailed to the intended recipients, Giese said.

Giese said the DPS employee told investigators that in April or May 2017, Vazquez followed the employee as he headed home, had him pull over and then made a pitch for the scheme.

“’We can make some money together,’” Giese quoted Vazquez as telling the employee, who agreed to participate in the scam.

Giese said that Vazquez gave the employee a “drop phone” and that Vazquez also had one of those types of devices. Vazquez “communicated (to the employee) the names of people who needed the CDLs without taking a test. They would switch phones every three months, Giese testified.

Vazquez had heard about the DPS employee from another person who also is believed to have bribed the employee, Giese said.

The FBI agent testified that the DPS employee frequented a convenience store near the DPS office that Diaz-Leon often visited and that’s where Diaz-Leon made his pitch to bribe the DPS worker.

During the sting, Vazquez gave the employee the name of a person who sought a CDL and a $500 bribe payment during one meeting, and $1,000 in a second meeting, Giese said.

Diaz-Leon also provided Vazquez with names of people seeking CDLs and $2,500 in each of three meetings, Giese testified.

Vazquez’s lawyer, Scott McCrum, and Diaz-Leon’s attorney, Guillermo Lara Jr., minimized their clients’ involvement, saying the federal agents had no evidence that their clients were involved in all 215 questionable driver’s license transactions.

Both attorneys argued that their clients had obtained their own CDLs without resorting to the alleged scheme and McCrum argued that Vazquez took no cut of the money he’s accused of delivering to the employee.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Blackwell argued that the pair still participated in the conspiracy, as he pleaded with U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth “Betsy” Chestney to keep the two defendants detained without bond.

But the court’s pretrial services officers recommended the pair be released on bond, and the judge followed the recommendation, setting their bonds at $30,000 unsecured.

After Blackwell asked the judge to suspend her bond order so prosecutors can appeal it, Chestney gave them just 24 hours to do so.

If convicted, the pair face up to 20 years in federal prison without parole, and deportation.

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