DALLAS – Ten airline employees who work at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport have been indicted for allegedly attempting to smuggle narcotics on commercial airliners.
Undercover FBI agents busted the attempted operation by negotiating deals for the transportation of certain amounts of what the suspects thought was methamphetamine, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Erin Nealy Cox said Tuesday.
The employees agreed to ship meth to cities across the U.S. for as much as $1,500-2,000 per kilogram, the indictment said. Cox said the men executed shipments of 66 kilograms of the counterfeit meth during a 19-month investigation between August 2016 and February 2018.
The first shipment occurred on Sept. 30, 2016, when eight kilograms were sent to a Newark, New Jersey airport on American Airlines Flight 0952. At least eight other shipments – as large as 10 kilograms apiece – were made to Newark, Charlotte and Phoenix.
Law enforcement officers were at the receiving end of each flight to collect the fake contraband.
A shipment of 13 kilograms was in the works when the operation was thwarted Monday afternoon, according to the indictment.
Nine arrests had been made as of Tuesday. Seven of the arrestees work for Envoy, a subsidiary of American Airlines. One was named as a Spirit Airlines employee and another as a former Spirit employee. Authorities did not have information on the tenth suspect.
“These individuals agreed to use, and in fact did use, their positions of employment to bypass security measures at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport,” Cox said. “They did this, as well as work with others they knew had positions of trust at the airport in order to transport kilograms of methamphetamine.”
Cox said no real meth was provided or transported during the investigation.
The indictments were handed down on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance.
The indictments also allege at least one of the defendant’s claims that he and his co-conspirators could smuggle anything onto commercial planes, including guns and explosives.
The suspects showed “ability and willingness to smuggle plastic explosives onto airplanes,” and even asserted fees as high as $5,500 to transport explosives.
No guns or explosives were shipped during the investigation, Cox said.
The arrestees named in the indictment are: Envoy employees Nelson Pabon, Jean Loui Vargas-Malave, Juan Comancho Melendez, Ruben Benito-Matienzo, Joshua Israel Pagan Zapata, Domingo Villafane Martinez III and Luis Javier Collazo Rosado; Spirit employee Jose Luis Gaston-Rolon and former Spirit employee Christian David Cruz.
They're expected to appear before a judge later this week, according to the Department of Justice.
“This case shows the lengths that these individuals would go to – individuals who are trusted with insider knowledge of our commercial airport system – to just obtain cash,” Cox said.