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American Airlines ex-mechanic gets 9 years jail for smuggling cocaine hidden under cockpit

A former American Airlines aircraft mechanic was sentenced on Friday to nine years in jail after being convicted of trying to smuggle cocaine covert below the cockpit of a flight to New york city from Jamaica.

Paul Belloisi, 56, of Smithtown, New York, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn, after being convicted in May 2023 of conspiring to possess cocaine, conspiring to import drug and importing cocaine.

A legal representative for Belloisi had no instant comment. American was not accused of wrongdoing.

The case occurred from a routine search of American flight 1349 following its Feb. 4, 2020 arrival at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where Belloisi had actually been an American mechanic for more than twenty years, from Montego Bay, Jamaica.

District attorneys said custom officers found 10 cocaine bricks weighing 25.6 pounds (11.6 kg) in an electronic devices compartment underneath the cockpit, and changed them with fake bricks sprayed with a substance that glows under a special black light.

Belloisi presumably drove up to the airplane before it might remove again, and got in the electronics compartment.

District attorneys stated police challenged him, and showed that he managed the phony bricks due to the fact that his gloves shone under the black light. They likewise said Belloisi was carrying an empty tool bag and wore a jacket big enough to hold the cocaine.

The drug had a street value of more than $250,000.

Irizarry on Friday also declined Belloisi's request for an acquittal.

She wrote that jurors could infer beyond a reasonable doubt that Belloisi knew the drug was aboard flight 1349 and purposefully conspired and assisted in its importation.

In a declaration, U.S. Lawyer Breon Peace in Brooklyn said Belloisi's conduct positioned a severe threat to the security of a. essential border crossing in our district and our transport. facilities..

(source: Reuters)