Charges filed in scheme to bribe DMV workers for immigrants' licenses
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

(09-11) 17:30 PDT OAKLAND - The wife of a man implicated in a scheme in which state Department of Motor Vehicle workers in Oakland accepted bribes for providing bogus identification documents to illegal immigrants has been charged in the case, court records show.

Raylynn Brooks and her husband, co-defendant Jose Ramirez, worked with DMV employees in 2005, authorities said.

Ramirez recruited clients willing to pay $1,000 to $1,500 to obtain a fraudulent California driver's license, and Brooks obtained bogus receipts for clients from then-DMV worker Marla Robinson, according to the federal charges filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Oakland.

Robinson processed their licenses at the DMV office on Claremont Avenue in Oakland, federal prosecutors said.

Robinson pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. She is to be sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen in Oakland.

Four other DMV workers in the Oakland office were convicted in the scheme. Frances Aliganga received a 38-month sentence, and Leneka Pendergrass was sentenced to 27 months. Brachelle Fifer was sentenced to six months of home detention, and Stephanie Davis received a sentence of seven months in prison and seven months of home detention.

The charges were the result of a 20-month investigation in which agents followed employees, dug through one suspect's trash and spied on the Claremont Avenue office.

There, undercover FBI agents acting as clients were steered by brokers to specific windows where a bribed DMV worker was waiting to process them, authorities said.

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