I came across an interesting post in The New York Times, written by Joseph Goldstein which highlighted an incident in New York recently where a ring of airport truck drivers and security guards nabbed more than 100,000 bottles of liquor from American Airlines.
The miniature bottles of alcohol were meant to be returned to a storage facility at the end of each flight however the truck drivers were stealing the alcohol and the security guards were allowing them to pass through check points unchecked.
Police seized the bottles stuffed in garbage bags at the home of a retired truck driver in Queens, the bottles were intended for resale to fellow co-workers for about $4 each, although their on-board value is $7 per bottle.
The post below can be found on www.nytimes.com:
In order to smuggle the stolen bottles out of the airport, truck drivers gave some of them to three airport security guards, who were also arrested, to let trucks pass through checkpoint areas without being carefully inspected, the authorities said. Mr. Nestor said that the Port Authority investigators learned of the thefts earlier this year. The investigation, which the authorities named “Operation Last Call,” included dozens of undercover buys in recent months involving tens of thousands of the miniature bottles, officials said.
The Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said that the criminal charges would focus on some 57,000 bottles of liquor stolen in the last five months, and on duty-free merchandise that was also stolen. The defendants, who were expected to be arraigned Thursday in Queens, will face charges including accepting bribes, larceny, and criminal possession of stolen property, the authorities said.