Brockton RMV in fed headlights
A former RMV manager and a driving school owner have been charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with giving passing test scores to people who had failed permit and driver’s license tests at the Brockton RMV.
Mia Cox-Johnson, 43, of Brockton, a former manager at the RMV service center in Brockton, was charged with two counts of extortion under color of official right and one count of conspiring to commit extortion.
Estevao Semedo, 61, also of Brockton, the owner of a driving school, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud.
They both have agreed to plead guilty in connection with separate conspiracies to knowingly issue passing test scores to individuals who did not actually pass tests.
According to the feds, Cox-Johnson took money in exchange for giving passing scores on learner’s permit tests for both passenger vehicle driver’s licenses and Commercial Driver’s Licenses. These customers were allegedly told to request a paper test instead of taking the test on the RMV computer. Cox-Johnson scored these customers’ paper tests.
Cox-Johnson allegedly accepted $1,000 in cash — delivered from a friend on behalf of another individual — in exchange for giving a passing score to the person’s relative in 2018. The relative had failed the passenger vehicle learner’s permit test six times when taking it in their native language.
Also in 2019, a customer came to the Brockton RMV and took three multiplechoice tests they needed to pass in order to get a commercial learner’s permit. Cox-Johnson allegedly accepted $200 in cash from an individual to score the customer as having passed the tests even if they did not actually pass. The applicant failed one of the tests, but Cox-Johnson scored the applicant as having passed all three tests.
Semedo, the owner of a driving school, conspired to defraud the RMV into issuing driver’s licenses to applicants who did not pass the road test, according to the feds.
Semedo paid a road test examiner at the Brockton RMV service center to misrepresent to the RMV that certain driver’s license applicants had passed their road test when in fact they had not.
Some of the applicants did not even show up to take the test. As a result of the fraud, the RMV mailed driver’s licenses to unqualified applicants.
MassDOT spokesperson Jacque Goddard said the agency is “pleased to see these individuals held accountable after the RMV uncovered the fraud, terminated the employees involved, and referred the matter to law enforcement for further investigation.”