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| Nelson Santiago Photo: Broward County Sheriff's Office |
TSA Agent, Nelson Santiago, was arrested on July 4, 2011 after he was caught taking an iPad from a passenger's luggage and stuffing it into his pants. It turns out that Nelson Santiago had made stealing from passengers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport into a lucrative side business to supplement the money he normally made from his TSA job.
Santiago would steal iPads, computers, GPS devices, cameras, etc. from the luggage he was supposed to be screening, and he would sell the stolen items over the Internet. He would sometimes manage to sell the items before his shift was over. Police say Santiago managed to steal around $50,000 worth of electronics over the past six months. Of course, the TSA did not catch Santiago. The TSA does not care about your valuables and theft. It took an observant Continental Airlines employee to catch the thieving federal employee.
So, when you take your valuables on a flight, please know that they may be stolen by federal employees who have been granted nearly unlimited access to your personal possessions. That smart phone that contains loads of important personal information, that camera that holds your vacation photos, the computer that contains sensitive business information, and that GPS that can provide your home address to a thief who happens to know you just left for a vacation could just vanish from your luggage and be sold over the Internet before your plane lands. These TSA employees should be looking for explosives and weapons, but how can we possibly expect them to focus on that task when they are busy digging for treasure in your luggage?
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