Davis man sentenced for role in Bay Area commercial license scheme, U.S. attorneys say

A Davis man was sentenced Thursday for his involvement in a scheme to obtain driver licenses for students enrolled in his commercial driving school, according to the Eastern District U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Court documents and evidence presented at trial show David Sun ran a driving school named Commercial Driver Institute USA in the East Bay, where a majority of his students spoke Mandarin and Cantonese, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott’s office. Sun, 65, would typically charge $2,500 to $6,500 per student for help in obtaining Class A or Class B commercial driver licenses.

The students had difficulty with written tests due to language barriers, but were occasionally provided a Bluetooth device by Sun to wear during tests, which he instructed them to conceal under a beanie, the release read. Sun would use it to relay instructions.

“He not only knowingly and willfully abused his position of trust for personal gain, but did so at the expense of others. in this document fraud scheme,” Tatum King, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Francisco, said in the release. “HSI will continue working with our law enforcement partners to identify and disrupt document fraud and bring to justice those involved in these illegal schemes.”

Attorneys said Sun, on multiple occasions, took his students to a California Department of Motor Vehicles office in Santa Rosa and they would meet with a licensing registration examiner Sun knew personally, officials said. He collected extra money to ensure his students would pass exams.

Court documents show a number of learner’s permits were issued to Sun’s students from the DMV office in Walnut Creek under a single employee’s login credentials between November 2014 and January 2016, but none of the students involved in the conspiracy visited that office or passed the test on the dates in DMV records.

Attorneys said Sun instructed students to attempt tests at various Bay Area DMV locations and if they failed Sun used their DMV receipt to obtain fraudulent scores and permits from the Walnut Creek DMV.

Attorneys say that Sun committed a second form of fraud in a residency conspiracy, where he recruited students from New York and helped them pose as California residents and obtain a license for the state, which he would mail to them following their return to New York.

Sun was sentenced to three years and one month after being convicted of a count of conspiracy to commit unauthorized access of a computer and to produce identification documents without lawful authority, eight counts of production of identification documents without lawful authority, and a count of conspiracy to produce identification documents without lawful authority and to transfer identification documents produced without lawful authority, according to the release.

The case was the product of a joint investigation by the DMV Office of Internal Affairs and Homeland Security Investigations.