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Man in fraudulent driver’s license case is found guilty
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Posted on Aug 24 2011
A federal jury found a Chinese national guilty yesterday of fraudulently obtaining a CNMI driver’s license.
After deliberating for less than an hour, the jurors came out with the verdict finding Wei Lin guilty of two counts of document fraud and one count of making a false statement to a federal agent.
U.S. District Court for the NMI visiting judge Mark Bennett said he will issue a written order that will expedite Lin’s sentencing.
Attorneys Joseph James Norita Camacho and Michael Evangelista, counsel for Lin, told Saipan Tribune that Lin has been in custody for five months now and the federal sentencing guidelines score these offenses at 0 to 6 months in jail, hence the need to expedite Lin’s sentencing. They said they will meet with their client and prepare for the sentencing.
Assistant U.S. attorney Kirk Schuler prosecuted the case. He presented five witnesses.
According to the indictment, Lin paid $350 to a third party to illegally obtain a driver’s license without meeting the requirements under CNMI law.
Lin had presented the Bureau of Motor Vehicles with an affidavit falsely stating that he had lost his previous driver’s license, when he knew that his license had been confiscated by a police officer.
On April 2, 2011, Schuler said, Lin told DHS special agent Isra Harahap that he did not have any identification documents, and that his driver’s license had been taken by a U.S. immigration agent in the parking lot of a poker establishment in San Jose. Schuler said the statements were false because as Lin knew, he was in actual possession of a duplicate CNMI driver’s license that he had fraudulently procured.
