According to the feds, workers at the International Transportation Academy conspired in helping people to lie and cheat in order to legally obtain a PennDOT Commercial Drivers License (CDL), something required to legally operate certain kinds of heavy trucks and buses.
10 people have been arrested, 9 in Philadelphia and Bucks County and one in New York.
First, ITA allegedly falsified residency documents, and then:
"Helping them cheat their way through the commercial drivers license computer portion of the test by giving them an interpreter, who would actually give them all the answers to the test," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan-Kelly said.
ITA apparently heavily advertised in Russian language papers up and down the coast saying for $2,200, it would guarantee a CDL.
According to court papers, staffers "assisted the applicants in cheating on the written test by providing the correct answers to guarantee, on behalf of ITA, that applicants passed the CDL written test."
Adding, certain defendants "assisted over 300 out of state applicants in cheating."
The larger concern is there may be hundreds of commercial drivers on busy highways who are not qualified.
The applicants came from 26 different states.
PennDOT has not received the names of those applicants and does not yet know exactly what steps they will take as far as those 300 are concerned.
