A bribery scheme that resulted in over 100 fraudulently issued commercial driver’s licenses has netted guilty pleas from three individuals.
On Friday, July 31, the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Louisiana announced that Mahmoud Alhattab, Jonathan Parsons and Marline Roberts had each pleaded guilty to one count of Bribery Concerning Programs Receiving Federal Funds. The three were charged in an indictment, along with others, in Sept. 2025.
Officials said that Alhattab – the admitted ringleader of the scheme – was paid roughly $5,000 on average to obtain fraudulent CDLs by bypassing the knowledge test, entry-level driver training and skills testing.
To bypass the knowledge test, court documents show that Alhattab bribed two employees with the Donaldson, La. Office of Motor Vehicles. Alhattab admitted to sending pictures of CDL applicants to the OMV employees, along with the desired license endorsements, to obtain a commercial learner’s permit. The employees were paid in cash and also received meals from Alhattab.
Once CLPs were obtained, Alhattab admitted to bribing two individuals who owned truck driver training schools – one of which was Parsons – to produce false training records. In his guilty plea, Parsons admitted to accepting payments from Alhattab in exchange for reporting that applicants had completed the necessary training to the federal database.
To bypass the skills test requirement, Alhattab bribed Parsons, Roberts and at least one other person to create false score sheets that would be submitted to the state to obtain the CDLs.
According to court documents, early in the scheme, Alhattab would sometimes pose as the applicant and drive the vehicle being used for the test to give the appearance that Parsons was administering a real test. They later determined that “precaution was unnecessary” and began entering skills test scores without anyone physically at the testing site.
In his plea, Alhattab acknowledged that many of the applicants lacked English language proficiency and he would often inform the OMV employees of language barriers.
In total, Alhattab confessed to helping at least 124 individuals falsely obtain CDLs from August 2020 through February 2024. The three defendants are facing up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $250,000. All three are scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 28.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that other defendants charged in the indictment are awaiting trial. LL
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