Houston, TX: The U.S. Attorney’s Office says that a woman from Houston was given a term for giving false information to get into the state database so that she could print illegal tags and then sell them to other people on the internet.
Leidy Hernandez Lopez, 43, pleaded guilty on May 10, 2023, to buying and selling fake temporary buyer tags given by the state of Texas.
Lopez was sentenced to 30 months in federal jail and then three years of being closely watched after getting out. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani for the United States said that the court also told Hernandez Lopez to pay $316,820 in reparations to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.
Lopez told Hamdani that he and others planned to sell fake paper tags worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One of the people charged and arrested in May was Octavian Ocasio, 50, from New York. One of the people charged in the crime was Daniel Rocky Christine-Tani, who is 33 years old. The charge came from a federal grand jury in June 2022.
The indictment also adds more charges against Emmanuel Padilla Reyes, who is on the run at 32 years old and is also known as Christian Hernandez Bonilla or Noel Rivera. Please call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or email www.TIPS.FBI.GOV if you have any information about where Reyes is.
There is a $5,000 reward from the FBI for information that leads straight to his arrest.
Used car lots in Texas need their own GDN license in order to buy, sell, or trade used cars. People can buy, sell, or trade used cars once they have a GDN license. Licensed GDN holders are the only ones who can access the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles’ online eTag site and make temporary buyer tags.
Court papers say Lopez and Ocasio used fake names, driver’s licenses, lease agreements, and business signs in the online application site to get GDN licenses for fake car dealerships.
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