Suspect in Driver’s License Fraud Implicates Co-Workers : Crime: A Department of Motor Vehicles clerk says other employees in her Arleta office engaged in similar schemes to sell illegitimate documents, prosecutor says.

A Department of Motor Vehicles employee suspected of selling more than 200 wrongfully issued driver’s licenses told authorities that other employees in her Arleta office engaged in similar frauds, a prosecutor said Friday.

Authorities said that over a two-year period Selma Harb, 25, funneled more than 200 licenses to a father-son team of driving instructors, who sold them on the street to unqualified recipients for prices that could have ranged over $500.

Harb, of Canyon Country, and the instructors were arrested Wednesday.

DMV spokesman Evan Nossoff said Harb, a clerk for five years, received about $50 per license from Wilfredo Sanchez, 45, of Tarzana and his son Frank, 21, of North Hills. Both were instructors at Delta Driving School in Eagle Rock.

The instructors in turn could have sold the licenses for exorbitant prices, Nossoff said. “It would have been a premium price, because (the illegitimate licenses) would have gone through actual DMV machinery,” Nossoff said. Once they were in the hands of buyers, it might have been impossible to discover that they were wrongfully issued to drivers who had not passed the required tests, because the license numbers were entered into DMV computers as legitimate, Nossoff said.

There have been reports in the Latino community that the Arleta DMV is a prime location to illegitimately acquire driver’s licenses--often accepted as proof of citizenship.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven Ipsen, who is prosecuting Harb and the Sanchezes, said, “I would suspect that some of the people who went through these particular defendants were illegal immigrants.” It would be too difficult to sift through DMV records to try to prove that in the prosecution however, he said.

In an interview with The Times, one Pacoima man recently recounted how vendors and driving instructors at the office repeatedly offered to get him a new license, or even a new identity, if he paid their price.

Vicento De La Rosa said that as he left the office after failing a driver’s test last year, “these guys come up to me and say, ‘We can help you get it (a license) for $50.’ ”

De La Rosa--who said he is a legal resident--said he declined, but returned to the DMV the next day. Then, a food vendor who works near the DMV office told him that driving instructors were in cahoots with employees inside the office to supply high-paying applicants with illegal driver’s licenses, he said.

Ipsen said Harb, who has been cooperating with investigators, will be charged with computer fraud, a felony. The Sanchezes will be charged with computer fraud, bribing a public employee and perjuring a driver’s license, he said.

“The masterminds appear to be the driving instructors,” Ipsen said.

The manager of the driving school where the Sanchezes worked, who did not want to give her name, said Friday that they would be fired.

Ipsen said prosecution of the three will focus on two recent cases in which they allegedly supplied youthful drivers with licenses that included false birth dates, making the license holders appear to be over 21. He said the Sanchezes charged $500 for the licenses, and passed $100 along to Harb.

The Sanchezes were being held in lieu of $25,000 bail each, he said. Harb posted bail and was released.