This is a lot of the article that appears in today's New York Times(R):This is what happens to your bags...
In Bags at J.F.K., Handlers Found Niche for Crime (And for once, they were not Dominican!!)
By MOSI SECRET
It was not so much the crime that was surprising, but who was behind it.
When federal investigators announced they had broken up a cocaine-trafficking ring, the crime boss was not a member of a Mexican cartel or the Mafia.
The ringleader was Victor Bourne, a low-wage baggage handler for American Airlines at Kennedy International Airport. And his associates in the enterprise were other airline employees: baggage handlers and crew chiefs who delivered contraband while they delivered luggage to the baggage-claim area.
Their cunning provided luxury watches, cars, tuition for their children and expensive vacations. Now they face prison.
For passengers, dealing with luggage issues has long been an annoyance of air travel. Bags can get lost or damaged, heightened security has made carry-ons less convenient and most airlines now charge travelers to check luggage.
But all of that may pale to what happens outside the view of the flying public.
Testimony at Mr. Bourne?s trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn during September and October revealed a culture of corruption among some baggage handlers at Kennedy. They stowed drugs in secret panels inside planes; stole laptops, lobsters and fine clothing flown as freight; and rifled through passengers? belongings for perfume, liquor and electronics.
? ?Everybody did it.? That?s a line that a lot of the witnesses said,? recalled Rebecca Grefski, a juror at Mr. Bourne?s trial, part of a case in which 12 American Airlines employees either pleaded guilty or were convicted. ?Everybody was doing it.?
In September, five former Delta Air Lines employees were indicted in Michigan for smuggling marijuana from Jamaica to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. In a related case, five other Delta workers were indicted in Michigan in June.
In November 2010, four part-time baggage handlers for American Airlines were arrested on charges of stealing valuables from luggage at Philadelphia International Airport. Detectives working with airline security officials set up surveillance cameras and said they caught the workers taking electronics, cameras and jewelry from passengers? bags. Three of them pleaded guilty, and the fourth is awaiting trial.
In 2009, the last year for which there is complete data, the Transportation Security Administration received about 6,750 reports of property missing from checked baggage. Passengers reported the total value of their losses as nearly $5.3 million. Clothing was reported most often as missing. Digital cameras also disappeared with some frequency.
From 2002 to 2010, American Airlines generated more such reports than any other airline.
In a statement, American noted its cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help in prosecuting the case at Kennedy. ?The overwhelming majority of American Airlines employees at our J.F.K. terminal and throughout our system are honest, law-abiding individuals who work hard every day to take care of our customers,? the airline said.
Yet the testimony in Mr. Bourne?s trial suggested that a serious problem seemed to exist at American Airlines.
?What percent of American Airlines employees would you say engaged in this conduct?? a federal prosecutor, Patricia E. Notopoulos, asked Matthew James, a defendant in the case who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
?About 80 percent,? Mr. James answered.Emphasis mine, HB)
American Airlines, in its statement, said that ?any claim of 80 percent employee involvement in such illegal activities is absurd.? Much of the action at Kennedy was centered on American Airlines flights from some warm-weather location, and the primary drug-ferrying route was Flight 1384, a daily flight from Barbados, which for much of the year arrives after dark.
Mr. Bourne, who is in custody, was found guilty of importing and distributing narcotics, as well as of conspiring to do so. He was also convicted of offenses involving financial transactions. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
His lawyer, Ephraim Savitt, recently filed a motion to dismiss the counts on which Mr. Bourne was convicted and requested a new trial. ?The witnesses on whose testimony the counts were founded could not be trusted,? Mr. Savitt said.
Mr. Bourne, a native of Barbados who prosecutors say had criminal connections there, bought cocaine in bulk and arranged for baggage handlers in Barbados to hide it on planes bound for New York, several American Airlines employees testified.
On Boeing 757s, the Barbadian handlers hid the bricks of cocaine among loose bags and freight. On larger 767s, they stowed the drugs in giant containers that were filled with luggage at the terminal and then loaded onto the planes. On Airbus A300s, they found hidden spaces behind the wall and ceiling panels in the cargo hold.
Only the airline workers at Kennedy who were a part of the scheme knew where to look.
?I would take the drugs out of the ceiling, put it in the bag, mix it up with other bags coming down the plane and send it down the belt,? said Edwin Asencio, a former baggage handler for American Airlines.
If the hiding spots were secret, the practice was not. ?I was bragging around the job that I was doing it, and I was trying to get my other friends involved so they could make extra money,? Mr. Asencio said.
Trafficking was heaviest during the winter months, when customs agents assigned to the tarmac were less likely to leave their cars, and when baggage workers could hide some of the bricks of cocaine inside their coats. When the customs agents were looming, the baggage handlers sometimes left the cocaine on the plane and tracked it as it hopped around the country. When it returned to Kennedy from a domestic trip, the workers ? taking care that customs agents were nowhere in sight ? removed the drugs.
Mr. Bourne sold the cocaine he smuggled for about $18,000 a kilogram and took home the biggest share of the profits, prosecutors said. They calculated that he made several million dollars, which was passed through businesses he ran in Brooklyn and in Barbados.
Handlers like Mr. Asencio worked in crews of three or four, and Mr. Bourne paid each of them from $3,000 to $5,000 each time they smuggled, they said.
Mr. Bourne also paid crew chiefs, the employees who assigned the flights, about $500 each time they assigned his crews to Flight 1384.
Steven Zografos, a crew chief who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import cocaine, described the first time he was approached by a baggage handler. ?He tell me his aunt was coming off the flight,? Mr. Zografos said in court, stumbling over his English. ?I looked in the schedule, and I took away the flight they were supposed to have, him and his crew, and I assigned him the flight that he wanted to work.?
?At first, I thought it was a pretty expensive aunt,? he added, ?but then I said, ?Obviously something else is going on here.? ?
Before long, he kept a bottle of correction fluid next to his crew schedule. Whenever someone from Mr. Bourne?s crew approached him, he would just Wite-Out the flight that he was supposed to have, and take Flight 1384 from a crew that had it, and make the switch.
Seven American Airlines employees testified against Mr. Bourne, all but one of them defendants who pleaded guilty and testified for the government. Ms. Notopoulos, who prosecuted the case with Toni M. Mele, Soumya Dayananda, Alexander A. Solomon and Tanya Y. Hill, summed up their testimony and the government?s case by calling American Airlines Terminal 8 ?a cesspool of corruption.?
Even the defense lawyer, Mr. Savitt, said that he believed part of the witnesses? testimony. ?It became very obvious that everyone in American Airlines? baggage services is dirty,? Mr. Savitt said. ?If they don?t steal commercial cargo on a regular basis, they are going to rifle suitcases. It is astounding the kind of valuable items they were able to steal.?
The cooperating witnesses face minimum sentences of 10 years in prison, unless the prosecution recommends leniency.
?I think everyone sitting in the courtroom and sitting in the jury box was surprised about how long it went on and that it was known to everybody,? Ms. Grefski, the juror, said of the criminal activity.
?You always hear about people having things stolen on airlines,? she added. ?It was a little startling that they talked about stealing so naturally.?
Officials with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that led the investigation, said the inquiry into corruption among airline employees was continuing.
In Bags at J.F.K., Handlers Found Niche for Crime (And for once, they were not Dominican!!)
By MOSI SECRET
It was not so much the crime that was surprising, but who was behind it.
When federal investigators announced they had broken up a cocaine-trafficking ring, the crime boss was not a member of a Mexican cartel or the Mafia.
The ringleader was Victor Bourne, a low-wage baggage handler for American Airlines at Kennedy International Airport. And his associates in the enterprise were other airline employees: baggage handlers and crew chiefs who delivered contraband while they delivered luggage to the baggage-claim area.
Their cunning provided luxury watches, cars, tuition for their children and expensive vacations. Now they face prison.
For passengers, dealing with luggage issues has long been an annoyance of air travel. Bags can get lost or damaged, heightened security has made carry-ons less convenient and most airlines now charge travelers to check luggage.
But all of that may pale to what happens outside the view of the flying public.
Testimony at Mr. Bourne?s trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn during September and October revealed a culture of corruption among some baggage handlers at Kennedy. They stowed drugs in secret panels inside planes; stole laptops, lobsters and fine clothing flown as freight; and rifled through passengers? belongings for perfume, liquor and electronics.
? ?Everybody did it.? That?s a line that a lot of the witnesses said,? recalled Rebecca Grefski, a juror at Mr. Bourne?s trial, part of a case in which 12 American Airlines employees either pleaded guilty or were convicted. ?Everybody was doing it.?
In September, five former Delta Air Lines employees were indicted in Michigan for smuggling marijuana from Jamaica to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. In a related case, five other Delta workers were indicted in Michigan in June.
In November 2010, four part-time baggage handlers for American Airlines were arrested on charges of stealing valuables from luggage at Philadelphia International Airport. Detectives working with airline security officials set up surveillance cameras and said they caught the workers taking electronics, cameras and jewelry from passengers? bags. Three of them pleaded guilty, and the fourth is awaiting trial.
In 2009, the last year for which there is complete data, the Transportation Security Administration received about 6,750 reports of property missing from checked baggage. Passengers reported the total value of their losses as nearly $5.3 million. Clothing was reported most often as missing. Digital cameras also disappeared with some frequency.
From 2002 to 2010, American Airlines generated more such reports than any other airline.
In a statement, American noted its cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help in prosecuting the case at Kennedy. ?The overwhelming majority of American Airlines employees at our J.F.K. terminal and throughout our system are honest, law-abiding individuals who work hard every day to take care of our customers,? the airline said.
Yet the testimony in Mr. Bourne?s trial suggested that a serious problem seemed to exist at American Airlines.
?What percent of American Airlines employees would you say engaged in this conduct?? a federal prosecutor, Patricia E. Notopoulos, asked Matthew James, a defendant in the case who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
?About 80 percent,? Mr. James answered.Emphasis mine, HB)
American Airlines, in its statement, said that ?any claim of 80 percent employee involvement in such illegal activities is absurd.? Much of the action at Kennedy was centered on American Airlines flights from some warm-weather location, and the primary drug-ferrying route was Flight 1384, a daily flight from Barbados, which for much of the year arrives after dark.
Mr. Bourne, who is in custody, was found guilty of importing and distributing narcotics, as well as of conspiring to do so. He was also convicted of offenses involving financial transactions. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
His lawyer, Ephraim Savitt, recently filed a motion to dismiss the counts on which Mr. Bourne was convicted and requested a new trial. ?The witnesses on whose testimony the counts were founded could not be trusted,? Mr. Savitt said.
Mr. Bourne, a native of Barbados who prosecutors say had criminal connections there, bought cocaine in bulk and arranged for baggage handlers in Barbados to hide it on planes bound for New York, several American Airlines employees testified.
On Boeing 757s, the Barbadian handlers hid the bricks of cocaine among loose bags and freight. On larger 767s, they stowed the drugs in giant containers that were filled with luggage at the terminal and then loaded onto the planes. On Airbus A300s, they found hidden spaces behind the wall and ceiling panels in the cargo hold.
Only the airline workers at Kennedy who were a part of the scheme knew where to look.
?I would take the drugs out of the ceiling, put it in the bag, mix it up with other bags coming down the plane and send it down the belt,? said Edwin Asencio, a former baggage handler for American Airlines.
If the hiding spots were secret, the practice was not. ?I was bragging around the job that I was doing it, and I was trying to get my other friends involved so they could make extra money,? Mr. Asencio said.
Trafficking was heaviest during the winter months, when customs agents assigned to the tarmac were less likely to leave their cars, and when baggage workers could hide some of the bricks of cocaine inside their coats. When the customs agents were looming, the baggage handlers sometimes left the cocaine on the plane and tracked it as it hopped around the country. When it returned to Kennedy from a domestic trip, the workers ? taking care that customs agents were nowhere in sight ? removed the drugs.
Mr. Bourne sold the cocaine he smuggled for about $18,000 a kilogram and took home the biggest share of the profits, prosecutors said. They calculated that he made several million dollars, which was passed through businesses he ran in Brooklyn and in Barbados.
Handlers like Mr. Asencio worked in crews of three or four, and Mr. Bourne paid each of them from $3,000 to $5,000 each time they smuggled, they said.
Mr. Bourne also paid crew chiefs, the employees who assigned the flights, about $500 each time they assigned his crews to Flight 1384.
Steven Zografos, a crew chief who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import cocaine, described the first time he was approached by a baggage handler. ?He tell me his aunt was coming off the flight,? Mr. Zografos said in court, stumbling over his English. ?I looked in the schedule, and I took away the flight they were supposed to have, him and his crew, and I assigned him the flight that he wanted to work.?
?At first, I thought it was a pretty expensive aunt,? he added, ?but then I said, ?Obviously something else is going on here.? ?
Before long, he kept a bottle of correction fluid next to his crew schedule. Whenever someone from Mr. Bourne?s crew approached him, he would just Wite-Out the flight that he was supposed to have, and take Flight 1384 from a crew that had it, and make the switch.
Seven American Airlines employees testified against Mr. Bourne, all but one of them defendants who pleaded guilty and testified for the government. Ms. Notopoulos, who prosecuted the case with Toni M. Mele, Soumya Dayananda, Alexander A. Solomon and Tanya Y. Hill, summed up their testimony and the government?s case by calling American Airlines Terminal 8 ?a cesspool of corruption.?
Even the defense lawyer, Mr. Savitt, said that he believed part of the witnesses? testimony. ?It became very obvious that everyone in American Airlines? baggage services is dirty,? Mr. Savitt said. ?If they don?t steal commercial cargo on a regular basis, they are going to rifle suitcases. It is astounding the kind of valuable items they were able to steal.?
The cooperating witnesses face minimum sentences of 10 years in prison, unless the prosecution recommends leniency.
?I think everyone sitting in the courtroom and sitting in the jury box was surprised about how long it went on and that it was known to everybody,? Ms. Grefski, the juror, said of the criminal activity.
?You always hear about people having things stolen on airlines,? she added. ?It was a little startling that they talked about stealing so naturally.?
Officials with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that led the investigation, said the inquiry into corruption among airline employees was continuing.
