Feds allege company owner wired up applicants to cheat on state commercial driver’s license tests

The owner of an Island Lake trucking firm has been hit with federal charges alleging he conspired in an elaborate scheme to cheat on state commercial driver’s license tests using ear pieces and a hidden wire.

Mykola Datkun, 33, of Port Barrington, was charged in a criminal information last week with one count of conspiracy to produce fraudulent documents. An arraignment was set for Wednesday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

Cases charged by way of information instead of a grand jury indictment typically end in a guilty plea. An attorney for Datkun was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.

According to the charges, Datkun owns Maximum Service Inc., a trucking firm based in far northwest suburban Island Lake that advertises for local and medium-range drivers.

From 2019 through 2022, the charges alleged, Datkun and others conspired to help applicants for Illinois commercial driver’s licenses cheat on their written tests by having them request an audio exam, where the questions are read out loud into headphones while the test-taker is in a booth. The written exam consists of up to 60 multiple choice questions.

On the day of the test, applicants met Datkun at Maximum Service on Roberts Road and were fitted with an earpiece that was synched up to the applicant’s cell phone, as well as a microphone receiver that was attached surreptitiously to the person’s shirt collar, according to the charges.

Once at the testing site the applicant was instructed to go into the booth, call a phone number that had been given to them, and place the headphones next to the concealed microphone, the information alleged. Datkun and others would listen in and communicate the answers back to the test taker in real time.

Based on their performance on the written exam, the test takers were then issued same-day commercial learner’s permits allowing them to drive trucks with a licensed driver, pending a road test, the information alleged.

The applicants paid Datkun $500 for helping cheat on the tests, according to the charges. The number of applicants who cheated over the four-year period of the alleged scheme was not stated in the information.

According to a 2022 warrant obtained by the Tribune, the investigation included two undercover sources who went “through the process”  to illegally obtain commercial drivers licenses through Maximum Service.

The first did so “with the assistance of a friend and not at law enforcement direction, but later provided law enforcement with details about the operation,” the warrant stated.

The second undercover was sent to Maximum Service at the direction of investigators and obtained a learner’s permit, according to the warrant. That person was helped by a second suspect who worked for Maximum Service who has not been charged.

The cheating allegedly took place at multiple Illinois Secretary of State facilities, including one in Elk Grove Village. There was no indication from the charges or warrant that any Secretary of State employees were involved in the alleged scheme.

Meanwhile, the charges against Datkun are certainly not the first to involve fraud in the state testing system for commercial drivers.

More than 25 years ago, two loyal Republican patronage workers blew the whistle on a long-running scheme where unqualified applicants were given passing grades on driving tests and received truck-driving licenses at the Illinois Secretary of State facility in southwest suburban McCook.

That led to Operation Safe Road, the sprawling federal investigation initially focused on bribes in exchange for commercial driver’s licenses for unqualified truck drivers when then-Gov. George Ryan was the secretary of state.

A total of nine fatalities were eventually linked to drivers with tainted licenses, including six children of a Chicago minister and his wife who died in a horrific crash on a Wisconsin highway in 1994.

The investigation subsequently expanded to include political corruption and led to the indictment and subsequent convictions of Ryan and several top aides and associates.

Ryan, who left the governor’s office in 2003 before being charged, was sentenced in 2006 to 6 1/2 years in prison.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com