El Cajon DMV Employee Charged in Bribery Case

A supervisor at the California Department of Motor Vehicles office in El Cajon is among nine defendants charged in an alleged bribery conspiracy that resulted in the production of fraudulent driver's licenses for applicants who had failed -- or not taken -- the required tests.

According to a federal complaint unsealed Monday, Jesse Mario Bryan, 36, supervised DMV officials responsible for conducting driving tests for driver's license applicants who were charged in a criminal indictment last May in a related case.

The criminal complaint also alleges that 43-year-old Alexander Gonzalez recruited applicants who would pay for fraudulently obtained driver's licenses, and that the entire conspiracy involved the payment of more than $100,000 in bribes by applicants to recruiters.

The other named defendants are 33-year-old Frank Tom Attiq, 48-year-old Ali Al Nadawi, 20-year-old Saleh Almuzini, 39-year-old Matthew Allan Elliott, 20-year-old Mohamed Alali, 44-year-old James Lester Shaw and 22-year-old Hassan Hamad Althami.

Those seven are accused of paying bribes to receive fraudulent driver's licenses. Recruiters brokered the corrupt deals for the fraudulent licenses by getting money from the applicants and paying the bribes to the DMV employees, according to the government.

From December 2010 through April 2012, Bryan supervised employees -- at both the El Cajon DMV office on Graves Avenue and the Rancho San Diego DMV on Jamacha Road -- who falsely entered both "passing" written and "passing" driving test scores for applicants in exchange for bribes ranging from $75 to $600 per license, the complaint alleges.

Last May, 21 defendants -- four of whom were DMV officials -- were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and to produce unauthorized identification documents.

-City News Service