Two Massachusetts RMV Employees Arrested for Selling Licenses

With the assistance of the Massachusetts State Police, the Mass. RMV did a little housecleaning yesterday. Two Mass. Registry of Motor Vehicles employees were arrested for making and selling fraudulent licenses. According to articles published today in the Metrowest Daily News and Boston Herald, RMV auditors and the MSP Compliance Unit discovered that a clerk at the Watertown RMV Branch was performing fraudulent transactions and selling licenses to people. The licenses had the photograph one person and the identifying information of another.

The Mass. State Police also arrested the Assistant Manager of the Haverhill, Massachusetts RMV branch yesterday for running a similar scheme, where she would issue fraudulent licenses to customers who paid her cash. Authorities caught her by auditing her computer transactions which showed an unusually high number of out of state license conversions. The Boston Herald reported that she manipulated the RMV computer system by using the out of state conversion feature to issue the false licenses.

The Registry of Motor Vehicles will undoubtedly conduct an audit of all transactions performed by these clerks and revoke any licenses which were improperly issued. Also, the Massachusetts State Police and RMV operate a sophisticated facial recognition system which will detect instances of someone’s photograph appearing on two different licenses. While it may seem tempting, especially for those who are serving a long license suspension or revocation, buying a license is never a good move. It is shortsighted and, chances are, the license will not be valid for very long. The Registry of Motor Vehicles and the Massachusetts State Police Compliance Unit are both very good at detecting, aggressively investigating, and prosecuting license fraud. In Massachusetts license fraud 5 year felony criminal offense.

If your Massachusetts license is suspended or revoked, you are much better off trying to get a hardship license than trying to buy a license.