A U.S. Marine Corps veteran faked deployments to take 130 free and discounted flights to the Caribbean, Europe and other destinations at the expense of a major airline, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Dior Jay-Jarrett, 29, of Queens, New York, was arrested March 20 on a federal wire fraud charge in connection with the scheme that defrauded the airline of nearly $70,000, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n
Attorney information for Jay-Jarrett, who now works as a federal air marshal with the Department of Homeland Security, wasn\u2019t immediately available the afternoon of March 21.<\/p>\n
Jay-Jarrett was on active military duty when he joined the airline as a baggage handler in October 2021, according to court documents. He was stationed on Long Island, New York, at the time.<\/p>\n
However, a special agent with the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office suspects Jay-Jarrett \u201cnever intended to actually begin work as a baggage handler,\u201d the agent wrote in a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
After one week of baggage handling training, Jay-Jarrett lied to the airline, saying the Marine Corps ordered his deployment to Kuwait for eight months, a criminal complaint says.<\/p>\n
The airline, which was identified only as \u201cAirline-1,\u201d granted Jay-Jarrett military leave after he is accused of falsifying and providingmilitary deployment documents, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
He did so \u201cto obtain travel benefits for which he otherwise would not have been eligible,\u201d the criminal complaint says.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than start work at Airline-1,\u201d Jay-Jarrett continued to work as a military guard in Long Island \u2014 and worked another job as a loss prevention lead at a sporting goods store, a special agent wrote in the court filing.<\/p>\n
While he was purportedly on military leave, Jay-Jarrett became a federal air marshal with DHS in October 2022, according to the criminal complaint. He retired as a staff sergeant from the Marine Corps the next month after having served since December 2013, the complaint said.<\/p>\n
Jay-Jarrett never notified the airline of his retirement but provided the company with additional documents in June 2023 to support a longer military leave, according to prosecutors, who said he lied about being ordered on a deployment for two and a half years.<\/p>\n
From November 2021 through September 2024, while pretending to be deployed, Jay-Jarrett took at least 130 flights because he \u201cremained entitled to travel benefits including the ability to take unlimited, free flights on Airline-1, alongside ticketed family members or travel companions,\u201d prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
For free, Jay-Jarrett flew first class to Los Angeles, London, San Diego, St. George\u2019s, Las Vegas and Dublin, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
He also took dozens of standard-class flights to Antigua, Aruba, Bermuda, Mexico and other countries in the Caribbean and Central America, prosecutors said<\/p>\n
In an August 2022 Facebook post, Jay-Jarrett shared photos of his five-day trip to Cabo San Lucas, according to the criminal complaint, which includes a screenshot of the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of the 13 countries I\u2019ve visited so far this year, this has genuinely been one of my FAVORITE solo trips,\u201d Jay-Jarrett captioned the post, the criminal complaint shows.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement interviewed Jay-Jarrett in September, and he acknowledged that he retired from the Marine Corps without telling the airline and faked military orders about purported deployments, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Jay-Jarrett \u201cracked up thousands of dollars in free or discounted flights while pretending to be deployed on military missions around the world,\u201d Acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did so while simultaneously swearing an oath to protect and serve the public.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Marine veteran that currently works as a Federal Air Marshal stands accused of several crimes … Marine vet accused of faking deployment for free flights<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":167881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,447,331,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-dick-stepping","category-marines","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/167881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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