This isn’t the first time that a flight attendant has been arrested for smuggling, and it also won’t be the last time. For once it’s not drugs, though…
Continue reading: American Airlines Flight Attendant Arrested For Smuggling $111K In Cash & Jewelry
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Maybe a descendent of Sgt. Schultz? This is interesting. It's a large amount of money and jewelry but illegal? I assume there are some tax issues with amounts that large. What if instead, she had, say $5,000 in cash and was wearing a $2,000 necklace and a $40,000 rolex. Would that still be smuggling?
I'm not quite sure the thought process that led her to believe 2.2 kg of gold bars wouldn't set off any alarm bells. Also having just /over/ USD$10k in cash is sloppy.
For those who don't know, Argentina has very strict capital controls to defend the official exchange rate of ~100 pesos/$ when the black market rate is ~185. There is a longstanding 30% tax on dollar purchases, and an additional 35% withholding tax. Hence the gold.
The gold alone is worth about $125,000 (it's $56,727 per Kg), so I'm not sure how they came up with those numbers.
@Rafael, Argentinian media actually provided that data so no issue at all. She was portraited in the local news portals.
@Ben, she is based on Buenos Aires. AA hasn't taken actions yet, nor issued a press release. She probably wanted to avoid paying the cut (esp. "coima, tajada", mex. "mordidita") so someone release their hand to her.
Ugh I didn't even need to open the article to know that an American employee doing something illegal had to be in Argentina. I would have expected the smuggling to be from the US into Argentina though
It is far more common than you think in South America. Exactly as to the reasons Juan mentioned. These are families moving out assets to the U.S. to avoid the high estate taxes. As we saw in the Pandora Papers the U.S. is far more prevalent in allowing money laundering and safe havens for foreigners to park cash than anyone knew. As well, I would imagine the bills were mostly older U.S. currency, many in Brazil as an example have them, and they are difficult to exchange there now and probably why she was carrying the cash. To convert it in the U.S. Most likely she was also running cash back to Argentina in newer bills. Jewelry and small valuable objects are the most popular thing to run to the U.S. Plenty of dealers await in Miami for South Americans. You would be shocked at the valuable items that are there and slowly get smuggled out to avoid taxes. The wealth in Argentina and Brazil in the early 1900's make it one of the richest sources of antiques of that period in the world. In actuality, it's very possible she was moving the items for her own family.
MIA-EZE is only operated by EZE based crew so as stated above, she’d be EZE based.
We seem to,let violent criminals go free so I don’t get what’s the big deal here. If she was a wealthy person with their own jet I’m sure she’d get away with it.
At least she is working. Not to excuse this but is nice someone is being able to have a little extra in this world with out killing someone.
Wow - it seems that they stopped a major crime here! I guess the worst thing is that the FA lied about the origins of the merchandise. Still, I just moved my jewellery collection out of my home in the Caribbean because there was work being done while I'm away for the season. Between Hubby and I, we were carrying over $1.8M in watches and jewellery plus about 5K in cash (from selling a car.)
Nobody said boo as we passed through security, though I admit I had my concerns. I was actually having an anxiety attack the night before, even though the stuff is all insured. Do these TSA agents have any clue how much jewellery moves around on flights between Asia and the US???
Fake. 3 daily EZE / MIA flights, only one of them is operated by EZE base crew. The other 2 are operated by MIA base crew.
This crap has been going on at American since the "foreign Nationals" from EAL got to keep their "special" status and bases in foreign countries....hell, they would rip out the lighting from the aircraft and see it as well as ALL the blankets and china from F/c. About time one of them was made to be an example of what not to do.
Why are we not allowed to to move our possessions, like gold, wherever we want.
Government has no right to steal our property when we do.
Yes, I recall boarding various planes that had been crewed by the “South American” based EAL prior crew members, or newly hired SA crew members who were only to bring the aircraft to “Gateway” airports.
Upon doing pre-flight emergency equipment inspections and normal equipment checks many times the equipment was missing. Maintenance crews had to find replacement equipment to make the aircraft operational.
These crews had been removing equipment for supplementary income purposes.
Obviously they didn’t care about safety! Totally unacceptable behavior by a so called Safety Professional.