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…
In this post:
American flight attendant arrested in Buenos Aires
A 58-year-old flight attendant has been arrested in Buenos Aires for attempted smuggling. Laura Diana Schulz, who is a purser for American Airlines, and has worked for the company for 28 years, attempted to export quite a few things out of Argentina. This incident occurred on AA900 from Buenos Aires to Miami on September 23, 2021, but has only been made public in the past few days.
While placing her belongings on the airport x-ray machine, the airport police noticed some strange things in her luggage. The police allegedly needed a court order to search the bag (which I’m a bit confused about), and then it was discovered just how much she had in her bags. The flight attendant was carrying the following without declaring it:
- $11,413 in cash, as well as smaller amounts of Argentinian pesos and Colombian pesos
- Three gold bars that included 2.2kg of gold
- Old coins
- Three vintage watches, including two Rolexes and an Audemars Piguet
- Five rings
- A pin
- Four bracelets
- Two necklaces
An appraisal suggests that the flight attendant was carrying over $111,000 in goods.
Interestingly Schulz is a native of Bariloche, Argentina, and in 1981 she was the National Snow Queen. It’s not entirely clear to me whether she was based in Buenos Aires (American has a crew base there, so I’d assume so), or if she now lives in the United States, and was just working a trip to Argentina.
What was the flight attendant’s excuse?
Schulz initially refused to testify, but after a few days presented a letter that provided an explanation for what occurred. She claimed:
- All the money belonged to her
- She found some of the coins, and others were through inflight donations made by passengers
- The jewels came from a family inheritance
Of course it seems pretty clear that this wasn’t the case:
- Evidence was found that she had long conversations on WhatsApp about the items to be smuggled
- There was no documentation to support her alleged family inheritance
- Some of the items were painted black in order to conceal that there was gold underneath.
It remains to be seen what kind of a punishment Schulz will face for this attempted smuggling.
Bottom line
Of course international smuggling is extremely common, and that includes among airline employees. While most airline employees would never risk their careers for this, for a small minority of people it’s very easy money that they can’t say no to. The flight attendant’s intent here seems pretty clear, based on what investigators found.
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.
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.
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....
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.
Conversion error? 2.2kg is over 70 troy oz of gold, worth 124k alone...
Knowledge error. You forgot the purity.
The integrity of the Snow Queen has been totally jeopardized! Shame on you!
Yeah fly spirit if you want your seat to be inside of the engine
Omg “passenger donations”. All I’ve gotten is dirty diapers
I knew it had to be American airlines, fly spirit, a wing above.
Now arrest the pandemocrat leaders, they are smuggling as we speak.
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.)
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???
With a good union rep, she’ll be flying again within 30 days!
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.
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.
MIA-EZE is only operated by EZE based crew so as stated above, she’d be EZE based.
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.
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...
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.
So much for the vaunted integrity of the National Snow Queens
My laugh out loud for the day!
Thanks Ben!
Ben L that is.....
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
@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.
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.
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.
I agree - having over 10K in cash was really stupid.
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?
Yes indeed smuggling. Plenty of scams to support this