Thread: Illegal Immigrant Charged With Selling Fake N.C. Licenses

Also see: http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-18168.html

http://www.wral.com/news/7613011/detail.html

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- An illegal immigrant is charged with selling falsified North Carolina drivers' licenses to other illegal immigrants for $600 each, authorities said.

Joao Cueiroz-Serafim, 21, a native of Brazil who lives in Newark, N.J., was indicted this week by a federal grand jury. He was arrested Feb. 8 at a Greensboro gas station with three fellow Brazilians who lived illegally in New Jersey.

Cueiroz-Serafim could get 10 years in a federal prison if convicted.

He is also accused of jumping bail on an earlier arrest on a charge of license fraud. Cueiroz-Serafim was arrested with two other people in Alamance County on a similar state charge on Aug. 24.

In the federal case, authorities said Cueiroz-Serafim was helping three people to get North Carolina licenses by providing transportation, arranging lodging and supplying false documents.

One person got a license the day before Cueiroz-Serafim was arrested, according to U.S. Middle District Court records.

Ernie Seneca, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the man who got a license presented a valid visa, though it expired in four days. A Division of Motor Vehicles examiner issued a license that expired on the same date, he said.

The men face either state charges or deportation, and Cueiroz-Serafim also faces additional state charges, according to Special Agent Lewis S. Winer of the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Winer said in an affidavit that the case came to authorities' attention when the four men arrived in a car with a New Jersey license, paid cash to rent rooms at a Winston-Salem motel and then rented a car.

That caught the attention of a Forsyth County alcohol-control officer who _ suspecting the men were drug dealers _ staked out the motel and followed the group to Greensboro.

The officer confronted the men at the gas station, alerting Division of Motor Vehicles investigators after learning their real purpose there, Winer said.

This story has now made the AP Wire which is good news. They took out my quote and Governor Mike Easley's staff lie.

The AP liked this story because it makes it sound like you need an agent of some sort for illegals to get a license when you take out my quote.

W