Eight employees for the DMV were arrested for selling drivers licenses to more than 1,000 illegal migrants without making them go through testing, training or vetting in what authorities are calling a major driver’s license fraud scheme.
They accepted cash payments to bypass the mandatory requirements, such as written tests, skills tests, and proof of residency or legal presence.
The more than 1,000 Non-Domicile CDLs were allegedly sold from a single DMV office in Florida.
A Non-Domicile CDL is a commercial driver’s license issued by a state to individuals not domiciled in that state – meaning people who do not have their primary legal residence or permanent home in the state – so illegal migrants who don’t even live in the state of Florida were being issued CDL’s without having to go through any required testing.
In this case, the licenses were allegedly issued to illegal migrants without verifying eligibility, legal presence, or driving competency.
This violates federal and Florida state requirements, which mandate proof of residency for first-time CDL applicants.
American Truckers United sent out a warning about this very issue four months ago, alleging that Florida was one of 10 states (including California, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Pennsylvania) that are “flooding the trucking industry with illegal foreign labor.”
They asserted that the scheme is part of a broader nationwide problem, with DMVs in multiple states issuing CDLs to illegal migrants en masse, potentially to undercut American truckers by providing cheaper labor.
Many are now pointing to an incident in March of this year where 37-year-old Solomun Weldekeal Araya crashed his Semi-Truck into 17 vehicles in Austin Texas.
Araya’s tractor-trailer, that was carrying goods for Amazon, failed to slow down.
Five people were killed at the scene, including a child and an infant. Eleven others were injured and taken to local hospitals.
Araya was arrested by the Austin Police Department. He was initially issued a $1.2 million bond but it was reduced to $7,000.
Araya bonded out with conditions including GPS monitoring, random drug tests, and a ban on driving commercial vehicles.
The truck was registered to ZBN Transport LLC, a Dallas-based for-hire carrier contracted by Amazon. ZBN stated Araya passed background checks and had been with the company for four months.
