An illegal immigrant is charged with selling falsified North Carolina drivers' licenses to other illegal immigrants for $600 each

Associated Press:

Joao Cueiroz-Serafim, 21, a native of Brazil who lives in Newark, N.J., was indicted this week by a federal grand jury. He was arrested Feb. 8 at a Greensboro gas station with three fellow Brazilians who lived illegally in New Jersey.

Cueiroz-Serafim could get 10 years in a federal prison if convicted.

He is also accused of jumping bail on an earlier arrest on a charge of license fraud. Cueiroz-Serafim was arrested with two other people in Alamance County on a similar state charge on Aug. 24.

In the federal case, authorities said Cueiroz-Serafim was helping three people to get North Carolina licenses by providing transportation, arranging lodging and supplying false documents.

One person got a license the day before Cueiroz-Serafim was arrested, according to U.S. Middle District Court records.

Ernie Seneca, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Transportation, said that the man who got a license presented a valid visa, though it expired in four days. A Division of Motor Vehicles examiner issued a license that also expired in four days, he said.

The men face either state charges or deportation. Cueiroz-Serafim also faces additional state charges, according to Special Agent Lewis S. Winer of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Winer said in an affidavit that the case came to authorities' attention when the four men arrived in a car with a New Jersey license, paid cash to rent rooms at a Winston-Salem motel and then rented a car.

That caught the attention of a Forsyth County alcohol-control officer who - suspecting that the men were drug dealers - staked out the motel and followed the group to Greensboro.

The officer confronted the men at the gas station, alerting investigators with the Division of Motor Vehicles after learning their real purpose there, Winer said.

Smuggled illegal immigrants arrested as smuggling accomplices