From Yahoo via AP:
Last month, an agent who worked searching checked luggage at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was suspended after the owner of a stolen iPad used the tracking feature on the device to locate it at the agent's home. Police found seven other iPads there.
Also in January, authorities charged an agent at Miami International Airport with swiping items and luggage and smuggling them out of the airport in a hidden pocket of his work jacket. He was arrested after one of the items, an iPad, was spotted for sale on Craigslist.
Two other former TSA agents at JFK were sentenced on Jan. 10 to six months in jail and five years' probation for stealing $40,000 from a piece of luggage in January 2011. The agents, Coumar Persad and Davon Webb, had pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct.
Last year, a TSA supervisor and one of his officers pleaded guilty in a scheme that lifted $10,000 to $30,000 from passengers' belongings at Newark Liberty International Airport. A federal judge sentenced the supervisor, Michael Arato, to 2½ years in prison and his subordinate, Al Raimi, to six months of home confinement.
It's not enough that we have to endure the liberty neutering regulations when trying to fly in an airplane, but now we have to worry that the people we are supposedly entrusting with our safety is also ripping us off in the process.
Granted this is a small, tiny even, percentage of idiots stealing from passengers, given the size of this agency. Still doesn't make me comfortable knowing that while I am at the mercy of their herd control measures I also have to worry that they are stealing my luggage as a bonus.
Yes it is small, but believe me there are a lot more TSA agents stealing. They have not been caught yet.
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