TSA screeners in LA ran drug ring, took narco bribes

Photo: Reuters. A man is screened with a backscatter x-ray machine at an LAX TSA checkpoint.

Four present and past security screeners at LAX took 22 payments of up to $2400 each to let large shipments of coke, meth, and pot slip through baggage X-ray machines. Oh, we are so very, very shocked.

In one incident detailed in the 40-page indictment (Link), screeners plotted to allow eight pounds of crystal meth to get through—then one of them ducked into an airport men's room where he was handed $600, the second payment for that delivery.

Just think! If you've flown out of LA recently, you law-abiding person, one of these very dirtbags may have harassed you over your terror-toothpaste.

More: LA Times, BBC News, Wired, WSJ.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: 911 • corruption • crime • human rights • liberty • politics • privacy • ripoff • security • security theater • terrorism • toilet security administration • tsa • WTF

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

http://twitter.com/SSGGeezer Thomas Needham

This is a surprise why? Sub-normal IQ cop wannabees given power and a way to leverage their position into extra cash? Sounds like a certainty to me
- msbpodcast
  
  I don’t blame the people working at the TSA.
  
  They’re like anyone without a clearly defined mission. (An excellent analogue is the role of the French army in Algeria. [The French government eventually gave up all pretense of holding onto property held by the French Foreign Legion because they realized that holding onto Algeria would cost them more in their own cultural identity as Frenchmen than Algeria was worth to France.])
  
  It is mainly due to a semantic anomaly.
  
  They do not know what they are supposed to actually be doing or have any idea of applying statistical sampling to their work.
  
  They think its their JOB to be complete bastards. (That’s why any initiatives like “TSA Cares” is doomed to utter failure. [Its a Systemantic failure in that they oppose their own function. :-])
  
  Its like not recognizing that the source of criminal behavior in the DHS and the TSA areas of expertise and operations, which is stopping criminal behavior, is going to be the DHS and the TSA.
  
  Should they eventually become successful, DHS and TSA will be the only source for illegal border crossing of contraband, for illegal border crossing of people and for theft of material crossing the border.
  
  Like inept members of volunteer fire departments who set fires in order to justify their own existence, the more successful they are at prevention, meaning the fewer fires they have to fight, the more they are the source of oppositional behavior.
  
  There has to be a regulatory oppositional force which investigates the DHS and the TSA to catch problems as they occur and keep these as small as possible.
  - Guest
    
    Hello threadjacking subject changer!
gwailo_joe

Oh, I get it: now you freedom hating hippies want to set up more roadblocks on interstate commerce: do you realize how many service jobs eight pounds of meth could create?

Poor, unfortunate, scapegoated TSA..why is BB so mean to you???
http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic

The hand of the free market is wear rubber gloves!
- oasisob1
  
  But no lube.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Have you always had Moqtada al-Sadr as your avatar? I just noticed.
  - http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic
    
    I have, its a thing. He is kind of a badass, regardless of the fact that the US Iraq command wanted to pretend they had no idea who he was.
marilove

I am so shocked, y’all!
http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic

Let’s face facts though, no way terrorists would try bribing officials. America!
- http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke
  
  I could actually see the TSA agents justifying their actions. Really, they are there to stop terrorists, not drug dealers, so taking a bribe to not do what they’re not there to do anyway should be all good, then.
Daemonworks

Only four? I rather doubt that.
Bink Binkerson

I’m shocked… SHOCKED, to hear of this activity by this important operational branch of the Ministry of Permanent Fear and War. A few bad apples, nothing more.
Stephen Somerville

The LAX screeners in my experience are much better than Burbank. They patted down my hair in Burbank…
loroferoz

Terrorists could, you know, bribe TSA officials and slip something far more dangerous under the pretense of smuggling drugs. However, we absolutely need NOT drug prohibition NOR these guys at the airports. In fact, if anything, they make these things more likely to happen, not less.

In fact, one Tom Clancy-like nightmare scenario that goes round my head involves terrorists smuggling in “unconventional” weapons using drug traffickers’ financing, expertise, means and networks of corruption. Just omitting to mention the fact that they are not smuggling drugs, or something besides drugs.
- http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm
  
  One of the many conspiracy theories surrounding the Lockerbie bombing claimed that the explosives were placed aboard the aircraft as part of a CIA-backed drug smuggling operation. There’s no reason to think that there’s any truth in it, but it shows that the basic pattern has been in people’s minds for many years.
  It’s almost elegantly simple: have people who have elevated security privileges (TSA guys); provide an incentive (drug money) for them to misuse those privileges; have them open a loophole for one type of contraband (drugs); use that channel for another type (bombs).
  
  Another obvious point of attack is anyone who controls runway access, or whoever has control over security screening and identification of people with access to restricted areas. In fact, if you’re not in a hurry, it’s probably not hard to get your own people into positions of trust.
  
  Al-Qaeda has a demonstrated willingness to play the long game, planning attacks on a timetable that’s years long. I wonder how much groundwork they’ve already done for the next big spectacular.
drawkward222

600 bucks for letting through 8 pounds of meth? Cheap date. Thats 80 grand wholesale. Broken up? Half a million.
benher

Even the TSA knows, the Spice must flow!
strangefriend

Once again, it was Jesse, not Walter, that had to go to the john to bribe the TSA agent.
That_Anonymous_Coward

Where is blogger bob to tell us this didn’t happen or was an isolated incident that should not be reflective of the entire operation?
How many TSA agents have to go down with felony convictions before we stop pretending?
- Guest
  
  Well, clearly the TSA is no Secret Service