A man who posed as a flight crew member in order to get free or low-cost flights in and out of Los Angeles County airports, which he would then sell to “clients” who would pay up to $2,000 for a year of low-cost flying, was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison.
Gilbert Myers Jr., 38, of Atlanta, Georgia, must also pay $91,500 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release, including six months in home detention, after he gets out of prison, according to U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson.
The judge said Myers took advantage of “a hole in the system” to commit a large quantity of “fraudulent acts.”
Myers admitted orchestrating a conspiracy to defraud air carriers in which travelers would illegally board planes while pretending to be employees of other airlines. In exchange for arranging their travel as “non-rev” employee travelers, Myers typically charged about $2,000 for one year of unlimited free flights, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Asking for a probationary sentence, Myers told the judge that an “abusive marriage” and money problems drove him to crime.
Defense attorney Stanley I. Greenberg added that his client had been “drinking too much” at the time of the scheme.
“This will happen never again,” the defendant told the judge.
Myers fraudulently booked more than 500 flights on such carriers as AirTran Airways, JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines, Sun Country Airlines and United Airlines, prosecutors said.
The travelers utilized Myers’ services by pretending to be in-flight crew members employed by other airlines.
To obtain boarding passes and stand-by tickets — for which airline employees pay little or nothing, hence “non-revenue” — Myers called the victim airline’s reservation call center and gave its representative the name of a traveler, the airline he supposedly worked for, a bogus employee identification number, and a date of hire.
Myers typically said he worked on a flight crew for another airline, according to court documents.
The defendant advised his “customers” to avoid detection by dressing appropriately and told them how to respond to questions about their bogus employment at another airline.
With the fraudulently obtained boarding pass and their real photo identification, the phony travelers went through Transportation Security Administration security screening and boarded planes listed as employees of other airlines.
All of the travelers were subject to full security screenings by the TSA, officials said.
In the plea agreement, Myers admitted to several specific, fraudulent booking calls. He acknowledged that he “fraudulently booked these and hundreds of other flights with victim airlines,” according to court papers.
“It’s not a lapse of judgment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney James Bowman told the court in arguing for a two-year prison sentence.
The prosecutor described the scheme as “very lucrative” and requiring “careful planning.”
Myers “saw an opportunity and did it over and over,” raking in a “staggering amount of money,” Bowman said.
The fair market value of the fraudulently obtained plane tickets was more than $277,000, and attorneys in the case agree that the applicable amount of restitution is about $91,500, prosecutors said.
Myers was ordered to surrender Aug. 17 to begin serving his sentence.
— City News Service