A boyfriend and girlfriend face charges in a driver’s license scam in Montgomery County that targeted Hispanic people, police said.
Jose Luis Ventura, 33, and his girlfriend, 28-year-old Desiree Lauren Alvarado, were arrested last month, Montgomery County police said. Each faces multiple theft-related charges.
In the scam, Ventura would charge victims who thought they would receive legal Maryland driver’s licenses about $1,500 to $1,800, police said. Detectives have identified 15 victims, and Ventura received a total of about $24,200 from them. Police believe there are additional victims.
To get a driver’s license in Maryland, an applicant needs to provide documentation of their legal U.S. residency status and Maryland residency. Police spokeswoman Officer Rebecca Innocenti told The Washington
Examiner that she could not say whether the victims in this scam were illegal immigrants.
On March 12, a Montgomery County police detective stopped a vehicle Ventura was driving in Silver Spring and found that there was a warrant for Ventura for failure to appear on a traffic citation, police said. When they arrested him, officers discovered that Ventura had fake identification cards in his name, had a handgun in his vehicle and also had numerous photocopies of other peoples’ passports, police said.
Further investigation, according to authorities, found that:
Ventura would tell the victims that he could legally acquire Maryland driver’s licenses because he knew someone at the Motor Vehicle Administration. Ventura would tell victims that they needed to solicit more people for licenses and would have the victims send him photocopies of personal documents. Alvarado would drive and accompany her boyfriend to meet victims and make arrangements with victims over the phone.
Ventura would arrange to meet victims at the MVA in Gaithersburg. The victims would drive in a van together, meet Ventura and give him an envelope with money. Ventura would say he was going into the building to get the licenses, but he actually would leave with the money and the victims would never hear from the couple again, police said.
In 2011, the last of five people were sentenced in a scheme in which conspirators worked out of a Prince George’s County’s MVA branch and sold dozens of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and criminals.
In 2007, there were an estimated 268,000 illegal immigrants in Maryland, comprising 37 percent of the foreign-born population in the state, according to analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies.
