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20 Boston Airport Workers Charged[/b]


BOSTON (AP) - Twenty people working at Logan International Airport were charged with lying to get their jobs or security badges.

 
Samantha Martin, Sullivan's spokeswoman, said 15 people were taken into custody in a sweep Wednesday morning. Five more workers were expected to be in custody by the afternoon.

U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan scheduled a news conference for Wednesday afternoon to announce details of the charges, which are part of an ongoing investigation to improve airport safety.

The employees work for private companies at Logan, not the airport itself.

Each of the workers was being brought into U.S. District Court for an initial appearance, but as of early afternoon the court had released the complaint against only one worker, Edgar B. Argueta. He was ordered held pending a detention hearing.

Argueta, 28, originally from El Salvador (news - web sites), was accused of using a fake alien registration card and a fraudulent Social Security (news - web sites) number on his Jan. 12 application as a cleaner employed by Precision Cleaning Co. The company did not immediately return a call for comment.

In December, 271 workers at Salt Lake City International Airport were fired after a federal investigation dubbed "Operation Safe Travel" revealed they'd lied to get their jobs and badges. A similar sweep also was done at the Las Vegas airport.

The ongoing review was sparked by a Social Security and Immigration and Naturalization Service audit that found a high number of airport laborers were using invalid numbers.

Security at Logan has been particularly in the spotlight because the two hijacked planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 took off from there.

"This federal involvement strengthens the ability of airports around the country to weed out individuals that have misled the federal government," said Jose Juves, spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan.

State police have been conducting background checks of employees of businesses that operate at Logan since 1987, Juves said.

"We did the maximum check permissible under the law with information made available to Massport," he said.

Hundreds of people have been denied jobs because of the checks, which include a Massachusetts criminal history check and check of outstanding warrants, he said.

Martin said all 20 workers were expected to have initial appearances in U.S. District Court on Wednesday afternoon.

Yeah, that's what I thought. If they were illegal and they knew that they were using fraudulent SS numbers, why didn't they do this long ago?

How is busting this guy, going to help prevent some crazys with box cutters from hijacking planes.

It probably makes the poor sob with the real ssn happy though.

Let's see.  How might terrorists exploit this situation?  Two ideas right off the top of the head.  Terrorist comes by the house of one of these workers and says "Tomorrow, you will take these box cutters to work and leave them on the x:00 AM flight to LA.  IF you don't, we will expose you.  You'll be fired.  Your kids will starve and may be you will be in prison for fraud."  

The second idea is simple.  If people are using ffake IDs to get jobs inside the secured zones at airports, do you think that maybe, just maybe, some of Osama's boys might have the brains to fake an ID and get a job there?  The Feds and the cops and the security companies can have Osama on the watch list but miss "Antonio", the worker with the fake ID.  

Maybe these tactics don't work everytime for the terrorists.  Any good intelligence officer will tell you that they will work enough of the time.  Nobody wants people with fake IDs working security or anywhere inside the secured zone at an airport.