 |
@wehaitians.com |  |
No one writes to the tyrants | |
HistoryHeads/Not Just Fade Away |
| Correspond with us, including our executive editor, professor Yves A. Isidor, via electronic mail: |
| letters@wehaitians.com; by way of a telephone: 617-852-7672. |
| Want to send this page or a link to a friend? Click on mail at the top of this window. |
|
 |
|
| Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 |
| Man who bribed clerks is sentenced to a 19- to 20-year prison term |
| By Elizabeth Ratto, Globe Correspondent |
A Billerica man has begun serving a 19- to 20-year prison sentence for bribing clerks at the Registry of Motor Vehicles in exchange for Massachusetts driver's licenses. Article Tools Printer friendly E-mail to a friend Mass.
Michelet Joacine, 38, was convicted at his trial in May, but fled shortly before the jury returned its guilty verdict.
The native of Haiti was arrested in June by State Police and sentenced Wednesday in Middlesex Superior Court.
State Police began their investigation in 2004 after officials at the Registry reported fraudulent activity by one of their clerks.
Authorities found that Joacine recruited clients in need of driver's licenses, directed them to clerks within the Registry's Melrose branch or the Cambridgeside Galleria satellite office, and provided them with forged documents they used to obtain their licenses.
Joacine paid a portion of the roughly $2,000 to $2,500 he received from each of his more than 100 clients to the clerks, two of whom were also charged in the scheme.
A Middlesex Superior Court jury found Joacine guilty of two counts of paying bribes, in addition to two counts of uttering false records at the end of his trial on May 25.
Joacine had posted $40,000 bail and had attended the four previous days of trial before he failed to appear in court on the final day.
He was arrested again in June and ordered held without bail.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company. Reprinted from The Boston Globe, City and Region, of Friday, August 17, 2007.
© 2007 The New York Times Company
RELATED TEXT: Michelet Joacine ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. / Mass Attorney General Office searching for convicted crook Michelet Joacine
| Wehaitians.com, the scholarly journal of democracy and human rights |
| More from wehaitians.com |
Must
learnedly read, too; in part, of intellectual rigor