Three months after the state shut down the owner of Ola’s Driving School for falsifying drivers’ tests, only 157 of his 1,108 customers have returned to take official exams with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Authorities say the bulk of the school’s customers were immigrants from out of state who obtained driver’s licenses without completing a legitimate test.
Sikiru A. “Ola” Fadeyi was suspended from administering driving tests in July after he was caught on tape by the FBI accepting cash bribes in exchange for passing grades.
The suspension marked the third time in eight years that Fadeyi had been shut down because of irregularities in testing.
Criminal charges have not been filed against him and he denied the allegations to The Denver Post.
Fadeyi appealed his suspension to the Colorado Department of Revenue and has an administrative hearing on Nov. 9.
Soon after the school was shut down, students from Ola’s Driving School received letters from the state informing them that their driver’s licenses were not legitimate and they would have to come to the DMV for another test.
Abdelali Benabis, a legal resident from Morocco, is one of those drivers.
A few months ago, Benabis spotted the school at 6875 E. Colfax Ave. and decided to go in to take a test behind the wheel. He had already completed his written exam at the DMV.
He filled out some paperwork, paid $75 and Fadeyi took him for a drive, he said.
“I didn’t know,” Benabis said. “I thought when I saw the sign ‘driving school’ that everything was legal.”
The FBI alleged in an affidavit that people from Nebraska, mostly immigrants from Somalia and Ethiopia, traveled to Denver to obtain licenses from Ola’s Driving School. The licensed drivers then went back to Nebraska and surrendered their Colorado licenses for one in that state.
Benabis lives in Denver and works for a hotel and says he wasn’t coming from another state to acquire a driver’s license illegally or in a roundabout way.
He says he’s been driving for years in his native Morocco and now is using buses and trains to get to work because his license was invalidated.
The 36-year-old speaks broken English and wanted to bring a translator with him to retake the test, but DMV officials told him he can’t use his own translator.
“The DMV isn’t allowing them to bring their own translators because some translators were involved in the fraudulent testing,” Mark Couch, spokesman for the Department of Revenue, said in an e-mail.
The DMV has worked out a solution with the Department of Human Services to help refugees and other immigrants with a list of approved translators so they can retake the tests. The Colorado Refugee Services Program can be reached at 303-863-8211.
After receiving the letter notifying him that his license was invalidated, Benabis said he went to Ola’s Driving School and confronted Fadeyi, who refused to reimburse him.
“He is not nice,” Benabis said. “I am just looking for justice, and I want my money back.”
But Aziz Riad, who has lived in Denver for 18 years, is not upset with Fadeyi, but with the DMV.
His wife took her written test at the DMV and, he says, a legitimate driving test with Fadeyi, but she received a letter invalidating her license. Riad says she shouldn’t have to retake the written test because it was done at the DMV and she shouldn’t have to pay more fees.
“It is a mess that they created,” Riad said. “We’re going to find a huge line at the DMV when I take my wife and waste a whole day of work. Why is that? I am being punished by them for their mistake.”
