Jetlinerimages/iStock(NEW YORK) — A 40-year-old Delta Air Lines employee was arrested Thursday for allegedly stealing over $250,000 at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City.
Quincy Thorpe, a baggage handler for the airline, was arrested at his home in Brooklyn and is currently in the custody of the FBI.
The money was part of a cash shipment to be loaded onto a Delta flight from Kennedy Airport to Florida but was discovered missing, prompting an investigation.
Quincy Thorpe “scanned and loaded bags onto Tuesday’s Delta flight 1225 bound for Miami,” the FBI said, before he took a bag of cash from a larger armored car transfer. The armored car’s security company realized one of eight bags that made up the transfer was missing once the flight landed in Miami.
According to the criminal complaint, security surveillance obtained from Delta shows Thorpe scanning and loading some of the eight bags onto Flight 1225. It also shows the defendant not scanning the stolen bag, but instead placing it into a container attached to a vehicle.
The next two days Thorpe called Delta Ground Services to say he would not be coming to work.
FBI agents arrived at his door when he allegedly admitted “that he was responsible for loading bags into Flight 1225 and knew that the bags he was loading had valuables.” The stolen bag contained $258,205, according to the criminal complaint.
Thorpe appeared briefly in Brooklyn federal court where he was released on an $80,000 bond.
“The alleged actions of this employee are unacceptable and in no way reflect the professionalism and values we expect from Delta team members. We are taking this situation very seriously and working directly with authorities on their investigation as well as conducting an internal investigation of our own,” said a Delta spokesperson in an email to ABC News.
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