BOSTON – Five airline employees have been charged in a sting operation with using their security clearances to secretly smuggle more than $400,000 in cash through Boston’s Logan Airport.
Four ground operations crew members of JetBlue Airways and one Delta Air Lines customer service ramp agent were arrested Thursday on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Transportation Security Administration.
(Note: Not conspiracy to “subvert” the TSA but the specific legal verbiage chosen was “defraud”)
Federal prosecutors say they used their security clearance to circumvent TSA checkpoints and smuggle cash to secure areas. In return, each allegedly received a payment from a cooperating witness who posed as a member of a drug-trafficking organization while working with law enforcement.
An attorney for one of the men says the government “created a crime” by enticing his client and the others.
These charges support my thesis once again that the real security threat at the airport is not from the passengers, but from those with “security” passes on the ground side of the flight line who have unrestricted access to the aircraft.