Colorado AG Investigating Scammers Who Hoard DMV Appointments, Sell Them To Undocumented Residents

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When something is free, but it’ll take a long time to get it, there’s always the chance that someone will try to take advantage of the situation to make a profit off impatient people. In Colorado, the attorney general’s office is investigating a scalping scheme that involves scammers hoarding driver’s license appointments with the Department of Motor Vehicles, then turning around and selling them to undocumented residents.

Many undocumented residents want to get a driver’s license, but are experiencing a long wait to obtain one, more than two years after the IDs were made legal, reports CBS Denver.

It’s a slow process: there are only three offices in Colorado offering the program, and there’s a three-month wait once you’ve made an appointment. Thousands have yet to get that appointment — which is free — in the first place, which is where the scam comes in.

“Someone, and we think it’s more than one, have started to hoard the appointments and make them and sell them,” said Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. Her office says they’ve received reports of victims paying up to $1,000 for an appointment.

“We started receiving complaints November of last year and so did the Division of Motor Vehicles,” she added.

It’s unclear how many people have been targeted by the scam, or how the scalpers are finding their prey. Groups that work with undocumented residents think victims might be paying for the appointments at neighborhood corner stores, the kind that offer help with taxes, insurances, and other filing duties.

Coffman says the investigation’s goal is to close any loopholes that have allowed the scam to succeed, and is asking for victims to come forward. Undocumented residents don’t need to be nervous about working with a state agency, she says, and are allowed to remain anonymous.

“We’re interested in finding who took the money, not the people who have been victimized,” says Coffman.

Scalpers Sell DMV Appointments To Undocumented Residents [CBS Denver]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist