Two more people have been arrested, and 19 others are still wanted, for allegedly getting Rhode Island driver’s licenses that were falsified by two clerks at the state Division of Motor Vehicles.

The clerks had sent the licenses to dozens of illegal immigrants and suspected drug dealers who’d paid middlemen between $2,500 to $3,000 apiece to conceal their identity with a valid license, according to the state police. Some of the “customers” have since been rearrested on drug charges in various states — where their true identity was revealed by fingerprints — but others are on the run.

As the state police search for the suspects, they are still trying to determine how the licenses were used — whether used in financial transactions, to buy guns, or exchanged in a different state for another license. In several cases, the licenses were used by people who’d been deported and illegally reentered, or who were wanted on drug warrants.

Anastacio Segura, 34, who also uses Martinez as his surname, was found at a work site in Boston Wednesday night with a fake Rhode Island license, said state police Capt. Stephen Lynch. He’d already been deported to Mexico, but had illegally reentered the country, Lynch said. Daniel Liranzo, 41, was arrested yesterday in New York City with a falsified Rhode Island license, Lynch said. Now, both Liranzo and Segura are being held for deportation. The two clerks, one of the alleged middlemen, and eight other alleged customers were also charged this week.

The state DMV said yesterday that new security procedures have been put in place since the state police investigation broke on Wednesday. “At no time was there any breach of public information,” DMV spokeswoman Gina Zanni said yesterday.

However, there are questions about how the state came to employ a clerk whose own immigration status is in peril.

Dolores Rodriguez-LaFlamme, 40, of Providence, one of the two clerks arrested in the fraud scheme, had already been ordered deported. Her application for adjusted immigration status had been denied after a federal investigation discovered two fraudulent marriages, according to a state police affidavit. LaFlamme is appealing the deportation order.

Some who know LaFlamme from her political action in the Latino community said they knew about her immigration issues. LaFlamme had volunteered on a number of election campaigns for Democrats, including those for U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, and City Councilman Nicholas Narducci Jr.

Yesterday, Narducci said he learned LaFlamme wasn’t a citizen last year when she tried to run for a seat on the Ward 4 Democratic committee. She had posted her campaign on a page on Narducci’s Web site — touting her employment at the Registry and that she’d come to this country from the Dominican Republic in 1996, and borrowing Narducci’s election slogan “A New Beginning.” But Narducci said another candidate eventually ran for the seat when it was discovered that LaFlamme was ineligible to vote. She was put on the Ward’s community action committee instead.

State Rep. Anastasia Williams, D-Providence, a close friend of Laflamme, said yesterday she didn’t know what type of visa LaFlamme entered with, or how long it would have allowed LaFlamme to remain in the United States legally. Williams said that LaFlamme “had gotten married to someone here, while she was still in good standing.”

“If she was illegal, she would not have been such an open person” in the community, said Williams. “She would have been trying to hide, if she had something to hide.”

When LaFlamme was hired by the state DMV in 2000, she would have gone through the state personnel system, which conducts a background check and identity check including an applicant’s Social Security number, said Zanni.

It’s unknown whether the DMV knew that LaFlamme had been ordered deported. Zanni declined comment on the employment status of LaFlamme or Soraya Santiago, 42, who is the other clerk accused of being involved in the license scheme.

The state police said the scam went like this:

The person who wanted the license would use an assumed identity to get a legitimate Rhode Island identification card. The person would give the ID card and the money to one of the middlemen, who would send the card off to the clerks at the DMV.

The digital picture on the ID card would be transferred onto a new Rhode Island license, and the new licenses were sent in the mail from the DMV. LaFlamme and Santiago recorded the new licenses as exchanges for out-of-state licenses, the state police said.

By doing this , the ring was able to circumvent the security procedures that the state DMV had put on its new licenses and state identification cards five years ago. After complaints that the licenses and identification cards were easy to copy, the state DMV changed to using digital photos and several security “codes” on the licenses that made them extremely difficult to duplicate, Zanni said.

The state identification cards resemble drivers’ licenses, but they are produced at the DMV for people who want identification cards but don’t need to drive. The photo ID cards are used by people in the same manner as drivers’ licenses — to prove their identity for banking purposes, to buy alcohol, or identify themselves for traveling on airplanes, for example. About 67,391 residents hold state ID cards, which are renewed every 10 years, Zanni said.

(Correction: The original version of this story reported an incorrect number for residents holding state ID cards.)

With reports from staff writer Karen Lee Ziner.

amilkovi@projo.com