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Updated October 23rd, 2019 at 13:06 IST

Airline employee commits fraud of $785,000 by upgrading tickets

Former Jetblue Airline employee pleaded guilty in front of Boston federal court to fraud after upgrade of flight tickets of family, friends and acquaintances.

Reported by: Avantika Shukla
Airline Employee
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An ex-employee of JetBlue on October 18, pleaded guilty in front of a Boston federal court to fraud after upgrading flight tickets of family, friends and acquaintances over a time period of nearly 15 months. Tiffany Jenkins who is a former gate agent of the airlines confessed to three counts of wire fraud which is worth $785,000. She could be given a jail sentence for about 20 years for the crime she committed. The 31-year-old employee admitted to taking advantage of her position to convert low-cost flight tickets to the higher cost ones for around 100 passengers. She accessed the JetBlue reservation database for the conversion where she applied a special code, from July 2016 to September 2017. 

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Upgraded tickets through 'involuntary exchange'

The process by which aided her is reportedly called 'involuntary exchange', which is usually done by the airways when there are situations when a customer misses their flight or may have to change their original plan in case of a death in their families. It was noted that she kept upgrading flight tickets from low-cost flight to expensive ones for free for 15 months. U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling stated that Jenkins as a gate agent had the access to the airline's computer reservation database through which she could use a special code that is supposed to be used as 'involuntary exchange' or 'INVOL', which will allow staff to change flights for customers. The airlines did not give any statement immediately. 

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Sentence to be announced in January

The former JetBlue employee got arrested in the month of November last year. At the time of the arrest, she had successfully carried out 505 cases of ticket exchange. Her case is in the court and she will be announced her sentence in January next year. Lelling said the charge of wire fraud is capable to get an individual a sentence of up to 20 years in the jail, three years of supervised release and a heavy fine worth $250,000 or even twice the amount of loss caused by the person, whatever is of greater value. A fraud committed by passenger or employees in the aviation industry comes as a big blow to it. 

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(With inputs from agencies) 

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Published October 23rd, 2019 at 12:21 IST

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