Four flight attendants used their airport security clearance to smuggle drug money to the Dominican Republic for an international organization that traffics fentanyl into the United States, according to a recently unsealed Homeland Security investigation.
The flight attendants, who are from New York and northern New Jersey, were arrested on May 7 following a four-year investigation by federal agents of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division.
The four arrested were Emmanuel Torres, 34, of Brooklyn; Jarol Fabio, 35, of New York City; Charlie Hernandez, 42, of West New York, New Jersey; and Sarah Valerio Pujols, 42, of the Bronx.
Each flight attendant was charged with one count of operating an unlicensed money transmission business and one count of entering an airport or aircraft area in violation of security requirements. If convicted on the federal charges, each faces up to 15 years in prison.
Mr. Torres and Mr. Fabio have worked as flight attendants since 2015. Mr. Hernandez has worked as a flight attendant since 2007, and Ms. Pujols has been a flight attendant since 2009.
The Epoch Times could not reach any of the attendants or their attorneys for comment.
According to the HSI complaint, the four smuggled a total of about $8 million in bulk cash as part of the international drug trafficking operation.
The complaint shows that the agents suspect they were each paid an average of $60,000 per $1.5 million in drug money they smuggled.
The New York Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York also participated in the investigation.
A federal complaint obtained by The Epoch Times cites activity on “major airlines” but does not name them.
It identified John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as the origin of the flights they used to smuggle the money out of the United States to the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean country that abuts Haiti.
According to the investigation, the attendants used their “Known Crewmember” (KCM) status with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to get the money on board without detection.
“Flight attendants are ideal for smuggling bulk cash,” because of their KCM status, an HSI special agent involved in the investigation wrote in an affidavit.
He explained that flight attendants, unlike regular passengers, are not required to put their carry-ons through an X-ray machine.
Additionally, by using their security badges, flight attendants can evoke KCM privileges when they travel as flight attendants and for “domestic person travel,” according to the agent.
TSA has the option of flagging flight attendants for an ordinary screening process when out of uniform, but not when they are in uniform, the agent said.
Once past what he called “the sterile” area, flight attendants have access to airplanes and other secure areas of the airport, he noted.
Using Code Words
“This investigation has exposed critical vulnerabilities in the airline security industry and has illuminated methods that narcotics traffickers are utilizing,” HSI New York Special Agent in Charge Ivan Arvelo said in a statement.Flight attendants also sent texts using code words, such as asking traffickers whether they had “any lotion to send,” which means “narcotics proceeds,” an undercover agent said.
The flight attendant smuggling ring is part of what the HSI said is “a significant money laundering organization that specializes in the movement of cash proceeds in narcotics sales from New York City to the Dominican Republic.”
According to an undercover report in the sting, flight attendants often referred to organization members as “los tigres,” and one of the attendants indicated that he dropped off the cash at a hotel in Santo Domingo—the capital of the Dominican Republic.
They were caught after agents went undercover as members of the narcotics operation.
The case is the latest in an uptick of fentanyl drug trafficking in the United States connected to the Dominican Republic.
According to ICE, as part of his arrest, they learned the man was previously arraigned on assault and battery by attempted strangulation.
In January, Boston ICE agents arrested a Dominican Republican national who already had been convicted of trafficking fentanyl. Ruled to be living illegally in the United States, he was released from prison in 2021 and deported.
