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Article published Nov 14, 2006
BMV worker charged with taking bribes
She allegedly made fake IDs for illegal immigrants.

JEFF PARROTT
Tribune Staff Writer

A former South Bend license branch worker faces felony bribery charges after allegedly selling false identification cards to illegal immigrants.

Julian Marie Sanchez, 28, of South Bend, told police she was known in the local Hispanic community as someone who could provide Indiana photo ID cards to people who came into the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles branch at 4646 Western Ave. with bogus Social Security numbers, according to court documents.

About a dozen supporters attended her initial court hearing Monday.

"I did it for my people," Sanchez told supporters afterward on the courthouse steps. "I know what I did was wrong."

Sanchez, yet to hire an attorney, declined further comment.She hired on in May and within a month had discovered how to process new ID cards with the false Social Security numbers. Authorities say they know of 58 people who paid her for the bogus cards, and Sanchez told police there could have been hundreds altogether, according to court records.

She is being charged with only five counts because charging her with more would not result in any more prison time, should she be convicted, St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak said.

Police say Sanchez typically knew the immigrants were coming into the branch ahead of time, and they paid her before or after the transaction at another location. The immigrants paid her cash, usually $100 to $200, but sometimes as little as $40 and as much as $500.

Rather than register at the desk and take a number to be waited upon, the immigrants simply sat down in the waiting area. When the chair in front of Sanchez's counter terminal opened up, they hurried to fill it, South Bend police Detective Sgt. Dominic Zultanski said.

Her supervisor, who doesn't speak Spanish, thought it was strange that they had not taken a number, but he never said anything because he figured she -- being one of only two Spanish-speaking employees -- had a 50-50 chance of waiting on them anyway, police said.Sanchez told police the practice was so common that if immigrants came to her with their actual Social Security numbers, she voiced surprise and asked them why they had deliberately come to see her, Zultanski said.

South Bend Police Department gang unit officer Anthony Pearson first learned of the scheme while working an unrelated case, Zultanski said. South Bend police then alerted the BMV, which launched its own audits of Sanchez and the branch's other Spanish-speaking employee, who was not involved in any wrongdoing.

This is not the first case of BMV employees engaging in fraud to provide illegal immigrants with identification, driver's licenses and other services.

Although the BMV did not discover the alleged crime itself, BMV Commissioner Ron Stiver tried Monday to reassure Hoosiers that it was "detected early."

Because of the case, Stiver said the BMV has implemented security upgrades that will make it impossible for an employee to do what Sanchez did. Citing security reasons, he declined to elaborate.A BMV employee in an Indianapolis-area branch had been charged with committing a similar crime in early October, and security enhancements the agency implemented after that incident were supposed to have prevented it from happening again. But Sanchez was charged with having accepted a bribe as recently as Oct. 28.

Still, the BMV says it has addressed the problem.

"I think we're confident we've added layers of security to prevent future occurrences," Cook said.

Staff writer Jeff Parrott:
jparrott@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6320