A 42-year-old hotel cook who was one of hundreds of immigrants who paid bribes to get fraudulently issued D.C. driver’s licenses was sentenced to one year of probation Tuesday.
Antonio Contreras, originally of El Salvador, and hundreds of other immigrants paid $1,000 to $1,800 to buy their licenses from convicted former D.C. motor vehicles clerk Patricia Gonzalez.
Contreras has already pleaded guilty to bribery charges and assisted in the investigation that put Gonzalez and two of her friends behind bars. But the search continues for others like him. Many of the bribers, who came from all over the D.C. region, gave fake addresses for their bogus licenses, and now authorities can’t find them.
Last year, Gonzalez was sentenced to 18 months in prison. She admitted that her friends Salvador Diaz and Gloria Gonzalez-Paz acted as recruiters for the scheme, going through Hispanic neighborhoods and finding mostly poor and working-class immigrants who were willing to pay cash to obtain a driver’s license.
Gonzalez met Diaz when he came into the Georgetown bureau of the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a license. Gonzalez-Paz, no relation, co-owned a restaurant that delivered meals to the DMV several times per week.
Gonzalez-Paz and Diaz are serving between two years and 30 months in prison.
Many of the immigrants, including Contreras, had tried but failed to get a license legally, but failed the test because they didn’t speak English well enough. Gonzalez offered them a way out.
Law enforcement sources acknowledged privately that they felt bad for Contreras and his fellow migrants, but had to prosecute the case vigorously.
“We hope the word will get out in the community,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Chubin Epstein told The Examiner. “If language is a barrier, then address that. But this should not be a way to get around the system.”
Contreras is the 15th person to be convicted in the licenses-for-bribes scandal.
