Three security screeners at San Francisco International Airport took payoffs to wave cocaine smugglers through airport security, federal authorities say in charges against the three.
The U.S. attorney’s office announced the charges of fraud and cocaine smuggling in a statement Friday.
Federal prosecutors allege security screeners Joseph Scott, Michael Castaneda, and Jessica Scott on five occasions took a fee in exchange for allowing through luggage that they were told contained cocaine. Each incident actually was an undercover sting operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Transportation Security Administration, federal prosecutors said.
The three were responsible for running the airport electronic screening and inspecting baggage. They were employees of security subcontractor Covenant Aviation Security. The company did not immediately return a telephone call Saturday seeking comment.
Authorities released Joseph Scott and Jessica Scott on $50,000 bonds on Friday. Castaneda remains in custody pending a detention hearing Monday.
Conviction on charges of smuggling over 10 pounds of cocaine carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
ABC News
TSA strikes again!
Grandma got run over by the Transportation Security Administration flying home from Portland, Oregon: Her son says that she was forced to take off her blouse and bra after triggering body scanners. The TSA denies the charge.
Harriette Charney had just wrapped up a two-week trip to visit her son, and was flying back to the East Coast from Portland International Airport when the extra money she had been carrying in a secret pocket in her bra set off the full body scanner at the TSA checkpoint.
When the alarm went off, TSA agents promptly pulled Charney aside to further inspect her.
“It was obvious they were going in to a search,” son Alan Charney told KATU. “But I presumed they were just going to sort of pat her down.”
Instead, the 90-year-old woman was taken into a separate room. And that’s where she was told to take her clothes off from the waist up, according to Mr. Charney.
“They wanted her to take, I guess, take all of her clothes off from her waist up,” he said, “and so she took off that and took off her bra… and I’m like ‘what??!!'”
Ms. Charney had sewn a pocket into her bra, where she was carrying a couple of extra dollars, which she had been keeping in case her wallet was lost or stolen, she said.
While her son agreed with the need to search his mother after she set off the scanner, he believed the TSA agents went too far.
“There was no sanity or sensitivity at all to the work that they were doing,” Mr. Charney said.
The TSA told KATU it is investigating the incident, but said the case was unusual. Typical procedures
call for agents to have simply asked Ms. Charney to lift her shirt for closer inspection and patted her down, adding that asking a person to completely remove clothing is not normal.
However, on Thursday, the agency denied that Ms. Charney was asked to strip.
“Preliminary findings indicate that at no time during the screening process did the passenger remove her clothing nor was she requested to. In fact, when the passenger, of her own volition, began to disrobe, she was immediately stopped by the TSA officer conducting the screening,” an agency spokesman told the Washington Times.
RT News
TSA agent at JFK caught red handed!
NEW YORK – A TSA screener is out of a job and facing criminal charges after police say she swiped a passenger’s diamond-encrusted watch.
Margo Grant-Louree, 41, of Montauk Avenue in Brooklyn, was ushering people through security on Aug. 26 when one man, identified by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown as Bindoo Ahluwalia, forgot to retrieve his Diamond Master watch from the plastic bin.
Instead of placing the timepiece aside and trying to locate Ahluwalia, surveillance cameras captured Grant-Louree walking off with it, according to police.
Grant-Louree said she took the watch into a bathroom near the Terminal 7 security checkpoint, but got nervous later when she saw her co-workers looking for it, according to the criminal complaint. She told police she then destroyed the watch, which was covered in small, white diamonds and worth $7,000.
Grant-Louree has resigned from her job with the TSA.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant was supposed to be screening passengers to ensure the safety of the flying public, but on this particular day this employee allegedly removed a very expensive watch from a plastic bin and kept it for herself. This kind of thievery will not be tolerated at our airports.”
She faces a third-degree grand larceny charge and one count of official misconduct.
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