DMV honored for post-oct. 1, anti-fraud work
Agency receives two awards at conference
The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles was recognized for its reponse to the Route 91 Harvest festival shooting and its anti-fraud efforts at a nationwide awards ceremony last week.
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) presented the state DMV the community service recognition and fraud prevention and detection awards at the 2019 AAMVA Region 4 Conference in Denver last week. The awards are open to agencies in the 50 U.S. states, U.S. territories and some portions of Canada.
Following the Oct. 1, 2017, shooting that left 58 people dead and hundreds more injured, many of the over 22,000 concertgoers left personal belongings behind, including driver’s licenses and identification cards.
The DMV sent staffers to the family relief center set up inside the Las Vegas Convention Center to help those who needed an identification at no cost to them, so they could do things like catch flights home and use their credit cards.
“At that point, we had hundreds of people who lost or left their purses, IDS, wallets at the site and as they were escaping,” said Joe “JD” Decker, chief of the DMV compliance enforcement division. “We had a lot of people, and there was a lot of confusion.”
The DMV worked with neighboring states to assist those affected by the shooting receive a temporary or replacement ID.
“You can’t really do anything without your ID,” Decker said. “We’ll issue you an ID, whether it be a permanent replacement or a temporary, just to get you home, so that they could fly or rent a car or that sort of thing.”
Those efforts helped 102 people get replacement or temporary licenses and netted the DMV the community service recognition award.
Additionally, a DMV staffer in Reno thwarted an attempt by a man wanted in California to obtain a state identification card using fraudulent documents.
DMV field services technician Maria Huynh had a hunch the man was providing her with fraudulent documents when he tried to obtain an ID card, and she referred the case to DMV investigators.
Huynh’s hunch was correct; the man was awaiting trial in Santa
Clara County for multiple counts of lewdness with a minor. He was arrested and extradited to California.
“She contacted people in my division, which is basically the DMV police, and we took a look at the documents and deemed them suspicious, if not fraudulent,” Decker said. “We then interviewed the person who presented the documents and determined his actual identities and discovered he was evading prosecution and a court order to remain in his county.”
Decker estimated the department makes a couple of hundred arrests each year, based on fraudulent document issues and outstanding warrants.
Huynh was awarded the fraud prevention and detection award for her role. She was presented the honor in front of her peers at the Reno office.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.