Delta Flight Attendants Charged with Smuggling Millions of Dollars in Drug Money to Dominican Republic

Delta aircraft at New York’s JFK airport
Four flight attendants, including two who work for Delta Air Lines, were arrested and charged with smuggled “millions of dollars of drug money” out of the United States to the Dominican Republic, federal authorities said Wednesday.
The four, who were arrested on Tuesday, abused “their privileges as airline employees” to smuggle the money out of the country, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
“As alleged, these flight attendants smuggled millions of dollars of drug money and law enforcement funds that they thought was drug money from the United States to the Dominican Republic over many years by abusing their privileges as airline employees,” Williams added.
As flight attendants, the four were able to traverse the airport’s security checkpoint using the Known Crewmember lanes at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The Known Crewmember program was developed as a joint initiative between Airlines for America, an industry trade group, and the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest airline pilot union in the world, to allow flight attendants and pilots to pass through a dedicated security checkpoint with the presentation of their airline identification, which is then scanned and checked against a database of verified airline employees.
Pilots and flight attendants are eligible for KCM as long as the crewmember poses “a sufficiently low risk to transportation security,” according to the TSA.  Crewmembers have been disqualified for attempting to access the checkpoint for personal international travel, carrying the property of another person through the checkpoint, and carrying prohibited items, such as a weapon, through the checkpoint.
“In effect, given these loosened security procedures, KCM privileges allow flight attendants to bypass airport security with large quantities of cash without that cash being seized,” the complaint reads.
The four – Charlie Hernandez, 42; Sarah Valerio Pujols, 24; Emmanuel Torres, 34; and Jarol Fabio, 35 –  face various charges related to “unlicensed money transmission,” prosecutors said.
Torres stands accused of smuggling at least $1.5 million in drug money to the Dominican Republic in the period 2015 to 2022, the complaint states, while Fabio smuggled out $1.5 million from 2015 to 2023.
Meanwhile, Hernandez took $121,215 in funds “derived from narcotics trafficking” from an informant funds and he then gave Pujols $61,215 of it for them to bring to the Dominican Republic in December 2019, according to the complaint.
In a statement, Delta said it was cooperating with the investigation.
“Delta has cooperated fully with law enforcement in this investigation and will continue to do so,” it said in a statement.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)