American Airlines ex-mechanic gets 9 years prison for smuggling cocaine hidden under cockpit

[Pelican Press 0]

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********* Airlines ex-mechanic gets 9 years prison for smuggling ******** hidden under cockpit

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A former ********* Airlines aircraft mechanic was sentenced on Friday to nine years in prison after being convicted of trying to smuggle ******** hidden beneath the cockpit of a flight to New York from Jamaica.

Paul Belloisi, 56, of Smithtown, New York, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn, after being convicted in May 2023 of conspiring to possess ********, conspiring to import ******** and importing ********.

The case arose from a routine search of ********* flight 1349 following its Feb. 4, 2020 arrival at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, where Belloisi had been an ********* mechanic for more than two decades, from Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Prosecutors said custom officers found 10 ******** bricks weighing 25.6 pounds (11.6 kg) in an electronics compartment beneath the cockpit, and replaced them with fake bricks sprayed with a substance that glows under a special ****** light.

Belloisi allegedly drove up to the plane before it could take off again, and entered the electronics compartment.

Prosecutors said law enforcement confronted him, and showed that he handled the fake bricks because his gloves glowed under the ****** light. They also said Belloisi was carrying an empty tool bag and wore a jacket large enough to hold the ********.

The ******** had a street value of more than $250,000. ********* was not accused of wrongdoing.

Belloisi’s lawyer David Cohen, from the law firm Cohen Forman Barone, said his client plans to appeal his conviction.

“Given Mr. Belloisi’s personal history, as well as national and district-wide statistics, this was an excessive sentence, far beyond what is necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing,” Cohen said in an interview.

Irizarry on Friday separately rejected Belloisi’s request for an acquittal.

She wrote that jurors could infer beyond a reasonable doubt that Belloisi knew the ******** was aboard flight 1349 and “intentionally conspired and aided in its importation.”

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said Belloisi’s conduct posed “a serious threat to the security of a vital border crossing in our district and our transportation infrastructure.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Richard Chang and Diane Craft)

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