SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The last of 20 people in California who helped put hundreds of unqualified drivers on the nation’s highways operating big commercial vehicles has been successfully prosecuted, federal officials said Monday.
Everyone charged in the long-running investigation was ultimately convicted and sentenced, except for one suspect who died before trial.
They were variously convicted of bribing public officials, identity fraud, accessing computers without authorization and conspiracy in cases that spanned the state from the Los Angeles area to near the Oregon border. Some accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.
They included employees at the California Department of Motor Vehicles who accepted bribes to record fake scores for applicants’ written and driving tests, including some who could not pass the exams and others who had not even taken the tests, prosecutors said.
Class A commercial drivers’ licenses like the ones involved in some of the alleged bribes are required to operate trucks, including 18-wheel cargo semitrailers. They are more difficult to obtain than regular driver licenses, and applicants must pass both a written test and a behind-the-wheel test that is offered at a limited number of DMV locations.
Trucking school owners bribed the DMV employees to pass unqualified drivers.
In all, prosecutors estimated that…
