Hidden phones, earpieces: Five non-English speakers arrested for alleged CDL cheating scheme

Several foreign nationals in Florida were allegedly caught cheating on their commercial driver’s license tests, further fueling national concerns about road safety due to an influx of non-English-speaking drivers in the American trucking industry.

'This story, when viewed in the larger context, points to the phenomenon that we identified late last year: labor dumping.'

Five men were arrested and are facing felony charges after Florida Highway Patrol investigators claimed they were involved in a scheme to use hidden phones and earpieces to cheat on DMV tests in Jacksonville, WTLV-WJXX reported.

Each man taking the CDL test allegedly used a harness to strap a phone to his chest, hiding it under a T-shirt with a small hole that exposed the camera lens. This allowed the phone to record the English-language questions displayed on the DMV computer screen.

The live video was streamed to an accomplice outside the facility, who then fed the correct answers back to the test-takers in real time in a language they understood, according to investigators.

Some of the men wore button-up shirts over their altered T-shirts to better conceal the hole, according to investigators. Once seated in front of the computer, they supposedly unbuttoned their shirts to ensure that the phone camera could capture the questions displayed on the screen.

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Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Florida Highway Patrol Sergeant Dylan Bryan called the scheme “organized fraud,” adding that similar operations could be taking place across the state.

All of the men who were arrested claimed they could not speak or read English and requested interpreters.

RELATED: Florida teams up with ICE to crack down on illegal alien truckers after deadly crash

Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images

“This story, when viewed in the larger context, points to the phenomenon that we identified late last year: labor dumping,” Shannon Everett with American Truckers United told Blaze News. “Approximately 10 states are responsible for the majority of noncitizen truck drivers being dumped onto the interstate system. This has been done with a combination of corrupt DMVs, fraudulent testing, and no enforcement for the last four years. Florida is one of the 10 states.”

State Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on Monday that Florida would ramp up its efforts to enhance road safety by turning some of its truck weigh stations into Immigration and Customs Enforcement checkpoints. This decision by Florida officials followed a fatal accident on August 12, which involved a truck driver from India. The driver received his CDL in California despite being unable to speak English.

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