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

NEW YORK — A former American Airlines aircraft mechanic was sentenced on Sep 6 to nine years in prison after being convicted of trying to smuggle cocaine hidden beneath the cockpit of a flight to New York from Jamaica.

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

The case arose 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 been an American mechanic for more than two decades, from Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Prosecutors said custom officers found 10 cocaine bricks weighing 11.6 kg in an electronics compartment beneath the cockpit, and replaced them with fake bricks sprayed with a substance that glows under a special black light.

Belloisi allegedly drove up to the plane before it could take off again, and entered the electronics compartment.

Prosecutors said law enforcement confronted him, and showed that he handled the fake bricks because his gloves glowed under the black light.

They also said Belloisi was carrying an empty tool bag and wore a jacket large enough to hold the cocaine.

The cocaine had a street value of more than US$250,000 (S$330,000). American Airlines was not accused of wrongdoing.

Belloisi's lawyer David Cohen, from the law firm Cohen Forman Barone, said his client plans to appeal his conviction.

"Given Mr Belloisi's personal history, as well as national and district-wide statistics, this was an excessive sentence, far beyond what is necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing," Cohen said in an interview.

The district judge on Sep 6 separately rejected Belloisi's request for an acquittal.

She wrote that jurors could infer beyond a reasonable doubt that Belloisi knew the cocaine was aboard flight 1349 and "intentionally conspired and aided in its importation".

In a statement, US Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said Belloisi's conduct posed "a serious threat to the security of a vital border crossing in our district and our transportation infrastructure."

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