MINEOLA, New York (WABC) — The Nassau County District Attorney’s Office has charged a group of seven people, including DMV employees, on Thursday in an alleged driver’s license cheating scheme on Long Island.
Deciding who gets to operate heavy rigs on the roads and highways is not something the New York Department of Motor Vehicles takes lightly.
“Bypassing that safeguard is far from a harmless shortcut, it is a dangerous threat to public safety,” said New York Inspector General Lucy Lang during a Thursday morning press conference.
But that’s what prosecutors in Nassau County are alleging in a new 51-count felony indictment against seven different people. According to the Nassau County DA’s office, the group is accused of engaging in a scheme to cheat on commercial driver’s license (CDL) exams and process permits for no-show applicants at the Garden City branch of the DMV.
Among those charged include Kanaisha Middleton, a supervisor at the Garden City branch of the DMV, as well as her sister, Jamie Middleton, who is accused of taking at least 10 different permit tests for no-show drivers.
Surveillance images show Jamie Middleton wearing different disguises, even fake facial hair as she posed as a man who would be applying for a commercial driving permit, but she forgot to take off her fake nails.
“We think it’s pretty, pretty poor. The finger nails kind of gave it away,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.
So did another supervisor who acted as the whistleblower.
Prosecutors say the defendants charged as much as $3,000 per permit test, two of them working the counters at the DMV so they could wave the phony test taker through.
Three of the drivers who paid the fee ended up with commercial permits. Only one passed his road test, James Nurse, 42, who ended up working at the Town of Hempstead Recycling Center, where he spent over a year and a half driving a truck.
“A government employee licensed only through a lie, driving a massive truck through our street,” Donnelly said.
The Town of Hempstead has since put out a statement saying they have moved to fire Nurse because he was never qualified to do the job in the first place.
Back at the DMV, where everyone else jumps through the usual bureaucratic road blocks just to get a permit or real ID, people reacted to the news.
“It’s not safe, it shouldn’t be allowed,” one man told Eyewitness News.
Others are not at all surprised by the indictment.
“I understand why someone might do it. I understand the frustration in trying to do it legally,” another man said.
The defendants are facing multiple felony counts, including impairing the integrity of a government licensing examination, corrupting the government, tampering with public records and falsifying business records.
If convicted, all defendants are facing a maximum sentence of between 2.5-7 years in prison. They have all been arraigned and are due back in court in November.
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