Inside the crafty DMV scam that rigged Long Island truck-driving licenses

A Long Island DMV supervisor scammed the system by having her sister don disguises to take commercial license exams for unqualified wanna-be truck drivers, prosecutors said Thursday.

Department of Motor Vehicles supervisor Kanaisha Middleton, 33, oversaw the cash-for-license scheme for more than six months, employing her older sister, 35-year-old Jaime Middleton, to wear disguises and even fake mustaches to take commercial driving exams for others, the Nassau DA’s office said.

“She’s in disguise, coming in different clothing and even gong so far as to wear fake mustaches, beards, glasses, masks — almost like a spy in an espionage thriller,” District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.

“These disguises were all about selling the scheme for the cameras,” she said. “[The real applicants] never set foot in the Garden City DMV, never clicked a single button to take the required test.

“Cheaters never win,” Donnelly added during a press conference.

The Middleton’s allegedly enlisted two other DMV employees — Tawanna Whitfield, 36, and Satoya Mitchell, 35 — to pull off the scam, charging up to $3,000 per license exam, prosecutors said.

Fortunately, the actual applicants couldn’t dodge a required road test for a commercial driver’s license, and only one of the nine “clients” were actually able to get approved after getting behind the wheel.

“We’re talking about drivers who don’t know the rules of the road and who prior to this had never passed a [commercial driver’s license] test,” Donnelly said. “They were potentially sitting behind the wheel of a 20,000-pound tractor trailer. Make no mistake — this scheme posted a real danger.”

All four are charged with corrupting the government, impairing the integrity of a government licensing examination, tampering with public records, and falsifying business records, and face up to seven years in prison if convicted.

The DMV scammers weren’t the only ones named in the 51-count indictment.

Three of the applicants — James Nurse, 42, Omesh Mohan, 42, and Rene Sarduy, 44 — were hit with tampering with public records and falsifying business records, prosecutors said.

Nurse, a Town of Hempstead sanitation worker, was the only one to pass his road test, and used the license to run a recycling truck in town, while Mohan, who was not so lucky on the road test, had previously served nine months for vehicular assault.

Authorities are still looking for the other fraudsters.

According to prosecutors, the scam began in March 2023, and went on for at least six months.

Kanaisha Middleton’s sister passed all but one of the in-person DMV exams she took while pretending to be a legit license applicant, the DA said.

In all, the crew charged between $1,500 to $3,000 for nine commercial and one passenger license test.

But the scam fell apart after an alert DMV employee noticed that the “man” taking one test was actually a woman in disguise, and tipped off the state Inspector General’s Office, who called the DA.

Kanaisha Middleton turned herself in on Wednesday and was arraigned on the charges, while the rest of the accused conspirators were arrested over the past nine days, prosecutors said.

“They sold out, not just the safety of fellow New Yorkers, but their oaths of office,” New York State Inspector General Lucy Lang said during Thursday’s press conference.

“Bypassing that safeguard is far from a harmless shortcut, it’s a dangerous threat to public safety,” Lang said. “Families, commuters and pedestrians across our state depend on the integrity of the licensing process.”