Six Charged in Probe Of Illegal Licenses

Georgetown Employee Among Suspects

Federal authorities raided the Georgetown branch of the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles yesterday and arrested an employee suspected of illegally selling driver's licenses, District officials said.

The employee was one of six people arrested yesterday on charges involving the illegal production of documents, FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said. One of the six is a juvenile, she said.

Authorities did not release the suspects' names but said the Georgetown employee is the only one who works for the city. Officials declined to provide information about how many licenses are under scrutiny.

Yesterday's instance was not the first in which FBI agents have raided the city's DMV satellite office at the Shops at Georgetown Park. Three times between August 2003 and August 2004, authorities arrested and charged DMV employees with running scams.

The branch, in the 3200 block of M Street NW, was closed yesterday afternoon while authorities searched the offices. Officials said it would reopen today.

Lucinda M. Babers, the DMV's director, and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) praised the work of the DMV's service integrity officer, Gabriel Robinson, who began to suspect a scam about eight months ago. He was reviewing city records while helping authorities on a case related to another jurisdiction when he noticed suspicious activity at the Georgetown office, Babers said.

Robinson alerted the D.C. inspector general's office, which led to the probe by the FBI, D.C. police and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

"This should send a message to the city that if you are a District of Columbia government employee who abuses the public trust, it will not be tolerated, and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Fenty said at a news conference at the Georgetown office.

The arrest yesterday appeared not to be directly related to a long-running federal investigation of operations at the 350-employee department that began in 2002.

In August 2003, a traffic violations clerk and a friend were arrested on charges that they took bribes for fixing hundreds of city parking tickets and traffic violations that year. In October 2003, a clerk was charged with illegally selling driver's licenses. In August 2004, a government employee and two others were arrested on charges that the employee took cash bribes in exchange for producing D.C. driver's licenses with false names.

Babers, a former Amtrak employee who joined the DMV in 2004, was appointed director by Fenty last year. She said that the department does not do background checks on employees but that the city's human resources department will soon phase them in for all agencies. Meanwhile, she said, the agency has made changes to guard against fraud. Surveillance cameras were added during a renovation a few years ago, among other things.

But an official with the Georgetown shops familiar with the investigation said that deals in the case related to yesterday's raid were made in the mall's food court.

"Everything we do has a black market," Babers said. "We're constantly doing reviews, but people are approaching our workers on a daily basis to try to entice them."

As D.C. officials talked to reporters, customers approached the DMV office, only to be turned away.

"This city has had so much trouble with corruption charges," said Ann Lane Mladinov, a management consultant from Glover Park who was seeking a residential parking sticker. "It makes me feel sad. Most people who work for the city government are good-hearted and hard-working. The mayor is trying to hard to improve services. But now this will be on all the news reports."

Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.