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TSA Employee Stole $50k Worth of Electronics

Posted by timothy on from the phew-glad-that's-over dept.

mrquagmire writes "A Continental Airlines employee Monday caught Nelson Santiago-Serrano, 30, stealing an iPad from a suitcase in Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office. Over the past six months, Santiago-Serrano told authorities he stole $50,000 worth of computers, GPS devices and other electronics from luggage he screened, took pictures of them to post for sale online and sold the items often by the time his shift ended."

9 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. TSA = Dumbasses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gee, I wonder if the TSA will still claim, "our boys followed procedure, we stand behind them."

    What a laughing stock the TSA has become.

  2. Security FAIL by putaro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If they can take something out without getting caught, they could be putting something in. Who would bother with suicide bombs if they can slip it into the luggage?

    1. Re:Security FAIL by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      10 to 1 the TSA agents don't have to submit to a grope or back scatter every morning when they start work. There should be three man teams, randomly assembled every day who have access to baggage. All other TSA agents should should not be able to see baggage let alone touch it. Otherwise, it is a security hole like GP mentioned.

    2. Re:Security FAIL by reboot246 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I have a better idea: Only screen for terrorists, and let passengers who have concealed-carry permits take their weapons aboard the plane.

      Not very politically correct, but very common sense.

      Oh, and I agree about not needing the TSA.

  3. How many get away with it? by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My luggage gets searched all the time. I'm pretty sure they've never taken anything - at least not anything I've ever missed - from my luggage. But really, if something was taken I wouldn't have any recourse for it. Who would you report it to? How would you prove it was there to begin with? Being as you release your checked bags before you even go through security, and they pass through multiple hands before they even get on to your plane, there is a chain of inaccountability. Even if you did something obscure but unique to identify your property you still wouldn't be able to prove who took it by the time it showed up on the black market.

    And of course, if you're like me and you don't live near a hub airport - therefore you need to take connections all the time - you and your luggage go through that many more sets of gates and hands before getting to your destination.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    1. Re:How many get away with it? by stephanruby · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You should have submitted the papers anyway. It doesn't matter if they're properly filled out, or not. It's not like they were going to reimburse you anyway. You fill out the papers, so that at least, your incident gets recorded in their statistics.

      Often times, authorities try to dissuade you from filling out paperwork, bad statistics make their bosses look bad, but then again, if no incident is ever recorded or filed, it's as if your incident never even officially occurred.

  4. Did you really figure by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dressing them in a uniform and giving them arrest-authority would suddenly make a poorly educated, under-class person magically transform into an upstanding middle-class person with a passion for doing their job to the best of their abilities?

    --
    Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
  5. Re:once again, we ask - by IonOtter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except that Texas chickened out and backed off. The TSA threated to designate the entire state of Texas a "no-fly zone".

    However, it would seem that a few legislators actually used their brains and thought about that for a moment, and decided to push the issue and call the government's bluff.

    I mean, seriously. Who actually believes that the feds would actually BAN all flights in and out of Texas?

    Please...

    --
    [End Of Line]
  6. Liberty safely removed... by Gription · · Score: 5, Insightful

    More to the point:
    There is no valid reason that I shouldn't be able to demand that my property be inspected in my presence and then be allowed to lock it securely before it is trundled off to the baggage handlers. Even if the TSA was above reproach, baggage handlers are not a group to be blindly trusted either.

    There are events that I used to go to by air that I can't go to anymore. When you are traveling an item that a fingerprint can cause $2000 of damage to either you drive or you don't go.