Ex-driving school instructor pleads guilty to RMV bribery scheme

Helped get fake road test results, prosecuters said

A former driving school instructor pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal conspiracy charge for scheming with an employee at the Registry of Motor Vehicles office in Brockton to take bribes from people who received driver’s licenses without passing a road test, according to court filings.

Ngan K. “Danny” Dinh, 48, of Dorchester, has agreed to forfeit $5,450 he received as part of the scheme and pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston to one count of conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud, according to a plea agreement filed in court in January along with the charges.

US District Judge Patti B. Saris scheduled sentencing for June 5.

Assistant US Attorney Christine Wichers told the judge that Dinh “taught driving lessons to Vietnamese immigrants who spoke little to no English” and required them to pay him in cash.

If the case had gone to trial, she said the government would have presented evidence that Dinh accepted cash payments totaling $3,300 between August 2020 and April 2021 from or on behalf of three people with learner’s permits who were required to pass a road test before getting a Class D license, needed to drive a car.

Dinh passed along a portion of the bribes to an RMV examiner who falsely reported that the three applicants had passed the driving tests, even they they hadn’t, Wichers said.

“Some permittees merely drove around the Brockton RMV parking lot,” prosecutors wrote in charging documents filed in court. “Others did not show up for their road tests at all.”

Wichers said Dinh paid the RMV examiner bribes totaling $300, which was $100 for each of the three fraudulently issued driver’s licenses.

However, Dinh disputed that, telling the judge he had actually paid the examiner a total of $650.

At one point during Tuesday’s hearing, Saris raised concerns about whether Dinh understood his rights and wanted to go forward with his guilty plea.

“You just seem a little hesitant here,” Saris told Dinh, who said he understood English but relied on an interpreter throughout the hearing. The judge ordered a recess, giving Dinh a half-hour to discuss the case with his lawyer. Afterward, Dinh assured her that he was aware of his right to have a jury of 12 random people decide his fate, but wanted to plead guilty.

Dinh’s attorney, Roland Pham, said Dinh, a father of two, is the “sole bread-winner” for his family and operates a hair salon in Saugus. The judge released him on personal recognizance pending sentencing.

Dinh and his lawyer declined to comment after the hearing.

Documents filed in Dinh’s case don’t identify the RMV examiner, but state officials announced two years ago that the agency fired four employees after determining 2,100 drivers received licenses at the Brockton Customer Service Center without taking road tests.

At the time, Massachusetts Department of Transportation officials said a supervisor noticed suspicious activity in 2020 related to the issuance of licenses at the Brockton center. The RMV reported the matter to law enforcement and later determined that starting in April 2018, about 2,100 customers received passing scores by two road test examiners at the Brockton location without actually taking the test. Two test examiners and two service center workers at the location were fired, according to the department. The fired employees weren’t named at that time.

In January, Neta Centio, 56, of Taunton, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for paying bribes to an RMV examiner at the Brockton center on more than 40 occasions beginning in July 2020 to issue driver’s licenses to people who never took a road test, according to the US Attorney’s office.

Last August, two people were sentenced to prison for their roles in bribery schemes linked to the RMV.

The former manager of the RMV center in Brockton, Mia Cox-Johnson, was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to extortion conspiracy and extortion. She admitted that between December 2018 and October 2019, she took cash payments in exchange for awarding passing scores on written tests for people who were seeking both passenger and commercial driver’s licenses, according to court filings.

In the other case, Estevao Semedo, who owned a Brockton driving school, admitted he accepted bribes, mostly from Cape Verdean immigrants, more than 70 times between 2019 and 2021 and paid $17,000 to an RMV examiner who gave them passing scores on their tests even if they failed or didn’t take them. Semedo was sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services mail fraud.

The charge against Dinh came on the heels of a sweeping federal indictment charging four current and former Massachusetts State Police troopers, and two other men, with scheming to grant commercial driver’s licenses to more than two dozen people who didn’t pass the required tests, in exchange for gifts. They have all pleaded not guilty.