Head of Texas DMV resigns amid concerns about fake paper license plates

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The head of Texas Office of Motor Motor vehicles has resigned amid pressure on the company to handle protection vulnerabilities that have authorized criminals to create and offer hundreds of hundreds of phony paper license plates.

Whitney Brewster announced her resignation Monday but did not right deal with the challenge encompassing the sale of bogus license plates.

“I realize the frustrations of our stakeholders to the problems and evolving conditions we are working daily to resolve,” Brewster mentioned in a assertion Monday. “Often the toughest issue to do as a public servant leader is to stage again and accept that you have carried out everything you can, and that it may possibly be time to enable new leadership to get the reins.”

Tv set information station NBC 5, primarily based in North Texas, aired an investigation in November on how criminals have exploited loopholes in the state’s technique to build a $200 million enterprise advertising illegitimate paper license plates across the region.

Faux tags can be made use of by criminals to remain nameless from law enforcement or by persons whose autos could not move an inspection. They have been tied to offenses that vary from keeping away from toll costs and advertising weakened motor vehicles to robberies and carjackings out of condition, the Houston Chronicle documented final calendar year.

Non permanent tags or paper license plates are issued to drivers to use for a limited time period just before they register their autos or to car or truck dealerships for loaner autos or for demonstrations.

Even so, criminals have produced hundreds of 1000’s of fraudulent tags by way of stability loopholes in the TxDMV’s method and then marketed them for a revenue, NBC 5 claimed. By posing as automobile dealers, sellers used fraudulent information and facts to offer tags across the U.S. Legislation enforcement officials have bemoaned the department’s gradual action to handle the situation, declaring it impedes their potential to find offenders.

“Texas is main the way in the quantity of paper tags that are staying fraudulently issued throughout the place,” Brannon Coker, an FBI special agent with the Houston Division, informed Austin-centered KXAN-Tv set in December.

Past May, 3 people had been charged with a nationwide scheme to sell these bogus license plates — a single of them a Houston resident. The trio have been accused of utilizing phony automobile dealerships to problem almost 600,000 automobile paper tags and sell them on the online without marketing any vehicles. If convicted, every single faces up to 20 a long time in jail and $250,000 in fines.

Although the issue has persisted for several years, TxDMV officers have said their fingers have been tied on how to address it. In a Dec. 1 assertion, Brewster explained the company is “responsible for implementing regulations passed by the legislature” but had “limited authority” to go previous that.

Even so, the Texas Legislature and TxDMV have both of those a short while ago produced policy variations to deal with the difficulty.

Texas lawmakers passed a bill in June that authorizes TxDMV to “take swifter action when fraud is determined and to lower the potential amount of tags at threat for illegal use,” according to a department push release late last month. The law makes it possible for officials to restrict the quantity of momentary tags available to dealers and terminate obtain to non permanent plates if the section finds out certified dealers are included in illegal things to do.

“These resources will cut down the capability of criminals to print unlimited figures of non permanent tags for unlawful purposes when making certain respectable sellers keep total access to momentary tags essential to assistance auto sales,” the launch said.

Brewster has been with TxDMV since 2012. Shelly Mellott, the department’s deputy govt director, has been named as interim govt director until finally the board finds a substitution.