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A man who tried to buy his commercial driver’s license won’t be going to jail or prison, but he wasn’t able to avoid conviction.
A state judge sentenced Kevin Heungik Ahn to four years of probation Thursday for offering to pay a city license examiner $2,000. Acting Circuit Judge Trish Morikawa also ordered Ahn to pay a $150 probation fee, $100 for the prevention of internet crimes against children and $105 into a state fund for crime victims.
Ahn, 61, who is also known as Heung Ahn, pleaded no contest in February to attempting to bribe a public servant and was facing a maximum 10-year prison term.
His lawyer Tae Won Kim told Morikawa that it’s too bad guilty or no-contest pleas to bribery cannot be deferred, because Ahn would have been a good candidate for avoiding conviction. Kim said Ahn needed the license to make more money to send to
his elderly mother on Guam and panicked.
Ahn apologized in court Thursday through a Korean interpreter.
The state says Ahn twice offered the examiner $2,000 to
skip a part of the CDL test. After the examiner rejected the offer the first time, Ahn placed a stack of cash on the examiner’s
clipboard.
Ahn was still at the testing site when police arrived and searched the vehicle he was hoping to use for the road test. Instead of the promised $2,000, police found just $1,200 in cash in a roadside assistance toolbox.
