DMV Tells Businessman He Didn’t Have All the Answers

“California driver’s license test exams with answers,” Richard A. Slobin’s flyers proclaimed. “All five exams for $10.”

State law prohibits the sale of answers to driver’s license exams. But that particular law is not what led to Slobin’s arrest Thursday.

Rather, state investigators say, the Tarzana businessman has been charged with fraudulent advertising. The exams he is selling are no longer the tests the state Department of Motor Vehicles is giving. Even though all the questions and answers in Slobin’s tests are included in the DMV license-renewal exams, they are not in the same order or groupings.

“He’s making statements here that are untrue and misleading,” Gary Naylor, a DMV special investigator, said of Slobin’s ad, which also appeared on a sandwich board outside his office on Ventura Boulevard. “Someone who pays $10 may be given an entirely different test when he actually goes to take it.”

Slobin, 44, was charged with violating the state Business and Professional Code, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum penalty of $1,000, six months in jail or both. He was released after posting $2,500 bail.

An angry Slobin said later he planned to plead not guilty. He said he had checked with two attorneys and a senior supervising DMV investigator, whom he would not identify, and determined that selling the exams would not break the law. Slobin vowed to make his a test case.

“I would not jeopardize my business or my position in the community by doing anything illegal,” Slobin said. “There was no misrepresentation on my part.”

He, in turn, charged that DMV is prosecuting him because he has made the agency look bad. His firm, California Automobile Services, or CARS, offers automobile dealers and drivers a time-saving alternative to standing in line at the state office. For a fee, the company acts as a middleman in most motor vehicle transactions, including licenses, registrations and transfer of ownership.

Slobin, himself a former assistant DMV manager, has driven home CARS’ message with billboards advertising, “Avoid DMV Waiting!” In response, a DMV official said of Slobin’s enterprise at one point, “I don’t see the need for it. A customer can generally get served at the DMV in 15 minutes.”

Naylor denied that Slobin had been singled out for special treatment. The DMV opened its investigation in March after complaints, he said.

If Slobin had been selling the proper test facsimiles, Naylor said, he would have been guilty of a lesser offense. The state Motor Vehicle law prohibits sale of any material “that contains the answers to any examination administered” by DMV, including driver’s license tests. An initial infraction is generally punished with a warning, although repeated offenses can lead to a jail term and fine.

Slobin, however, interprets this law differently. Although sale of test answers is prohibited, he said, “It does not say it is illegal to sell the questions with the answers.”

Naylor indicated that Slobin may have had the correct test questions and answers at one time, but that that is no longer so. Slobin acknowledged that DMV is phasing out the tests he is selling, but he maintained that the transition has not been completed.

He has sold the test facsimiles, which he said he obtained from a major magazine, for two years. He declined to say how many he has sold.

When he received a complaint from a buyer, which happened no more than three times, Slobin said, he refunded the customer’s $10.