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Comptroller reveals more than $50 million in uncollected fines at the Metropolitan CESCO and possible fraud in fine status changes

The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico (OCPR) issued an adverse opinion on the fiscal operations of the Metropolitan Driver Services Center (CESCO) of the Driver Services Directorate (DISCO) of the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP). The tests performed and the evidence revealed that the operations related to the correction and change of status of the administrative fines levied in the Drivers and Vehicles Information Database Plus – DAVID System were not carried out, in all significant aspects, in accordance with the applicable law and regulations.

The Report reveals that $47.9 million in traffic fines from 543,711 uncorrected fines had not been collected as of 2019. The clerk in charge of verifying the digitization process of the tickets by the contracted company and working the tickets with errors took a leave in September 2017, and upon her reinstatement was assigned to other duties.

In this regard, the DTOP had to formalize a $350,000 contract in 2019 to work these uncorrected fines. From the work performed through automated programming, 90% of the tickets with errors could not be corrected because, in most cases, the writing was illegible.

In fact, the contractor's proposal was that 95% of the process of working the fines with incidents would be carried out with image data capture technology. However, being unable to comply, the company told the DTOP to assign personnel to analyze the images of the data captured and recorded in the DAVID system.

The company in charge of digitization sent the invoices for payment with the Control Sheet of Digitized and Levied Tickets in the DAVID Plus System. The auditors detected in a sample of 42 invoices for $6 million, that 69% were certified correct by personnel who were not in the digitization process, and 31% were paid without the control sheets being signed by personnel of the Metropolitan CESCO.

The audit, with four findings, notes multiple deficiencies with the process of changing the status of the fines levied in the DAVID System. From the examination of a sample of the fines changed to expired status, it was detected that 63% had expired due to the delay of up to 10 months in recording the lien. In addition, fines were found with a status change to paid without evidence of payment, fines incorrectly changed to expired, and fines invalidated without explaining the reason. These situations caused the loss of $48,837 in revenue, from the sample of 455 fines examined from 2016 to 2018.

In this process of changing the status of the fines, the auditors identified 19 operators who made 129 status changes to the fines contrary to law. For example, Operator 1 of the Metropolitan CESCO invalidated one of his own fines out of the 15 he invalidated and changed the status of another nine fines to paid, outside of working hours. Operator 2 of the Bayamón CESCO changed five fines to paid status outside of working hours, of which two had no payments recorded. Operator 3 of the Bayamón CESCO also made status changes outside of working hours and invalidated fines. Operator 4, a consultant of DISCO, changed some 10 fines to expired status without evidence of payments of the express toll, or vehicle sticker renewal, and canceled one of his own fines of $500 and that of a DISCO employee of $75. Operators 5 and 6, the former director of Investigations and Inspection of DISCO, canceled seven fines and invalidated two other fines. These operators also changed the status of another 2,290 fines for $83,100 outside the examined sample.

The Report comments that these situations were referred to the Department of Justice and the Office of Government Ethics on February 23, 2022. On December 23, 2024, the then secretary of the DTOP notified that following internal investigations one employee of the Metropolitan CESCO was dismissed and charges and intent of dismissal were filed against three employees of the Bayamón, Caguas and Minillas CESCO.

The audit identified that Regulation 8645, which regulates the imposition and cancellation of liens, had not been revised as of February 4, 2020 to align the costs for the imposition and cancellation of mortgage and chattel liens, as established by Act 21-2012. In addition, the DTOP does not have control standards for the process of changing the status of the administrative traffic fines that are recorded in the DAVID system.

On the other hand, the document warehouse of the Metropolitan CESCO does not maintain an updated inventory of the documents in the warehouse, access is not controlled, and boxes were delivered without processing sheets.

The report also comments that between 48% and 68% of the 921,322 AutoExpreso fines for $29.2 million between 2016 and 2018 are not collected since the DTOP does not have the mechanisms to identify the drivers of leased vehicles.

This report covers the period from January 1, 2015 to June 30, 2021

The Audit Report OC-25-77 can be obtained on our website: www.ocpr.gov.pr.