Staff Report
Published Feb. 3, 2012

An employee of the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles has pleaded guilty to issuing fake commercial driver’s licenses.

U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles reported that Brenda Poston, 40, of Florence, pleaded guilty to an indictment charging her with issuing fraudulent commercial driver’s licenses and obtaining a fraudulent social security number for a driver’s license, which are violations of federal law.

The maximum penalty for the offense is a fine of $250,000 and/or imprisonment for five years, a term of supervised release of not more than three years to be served after the term of incarceration is completed, and a special assessment of $100.

As part of her guilty plea, Poston admitted to falsely entering information into the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles’ database indicating that an individual had passed the written knowledge test and the driving skills test when in fact that individual had not taken either test.

Instead, Poston had waived the requirements in the SCDMV software that the individual take the tests. Both a written test and a driving skills test must be passed before an individual can obtain a commercial driver’s license.

The case was investigated by agents of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles Office of Internal Affairs and the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert C. Jendron of the Columbia office prosecuted the case.