Officials with several cargo companies at Kennedy Airport were charged Wednesday with bribing a senior Delta Airlines employee with more than $250,000 in cash over five years, plus trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, to keep their lucrative contracts, the New York State Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday.
In one of three legs of the intricate scheme, Irfan Syed, the CEO of Jet Way Security and Jet Way Aviation Services, along with his top aide, Beau Bauer, and a third as-yet-unindicted co-conspirator heading Alliance Ground International, allegedly paid the Delta official $8,000 every three months between 2018 and 2023 in exchange for extending their coveted contracts, the AG’s office said.
The schemers allegedly created fake $25,000 invoices each quarter to look like legitimate payments from AGI to Jet Way. Instead, the money was split three ways between Syed, Finn and the Delta official, the AG’s office said. They also brought the Delta staffer four trips a year to Las Vegas and yearly trips to Atlantic City, comping his expenses.
The Delta official also took bribes to preserve contracts from a fourth man, Raymond Kayume, head of Kennedy Advanced Professional Services, which provides workers for the airport, the AG’s office said. Kayume agreed to pay 5% of the company’s earnings to the Delta staffer, hiding the payments in checks for phantom work.
The third leg of the airport scheme involved Joseph Puzzo, a manager at American Compressed Gases Inc., which provides the gas that powers forklifts. To keep his company’s contracts, Puzzo funneled bribes to a third company for fake consulting fees, the AG’s office alleged.
The third company would keep half of the cash and send the rest to the Delta official, accounting for the bribes by writing checks for nonexistent office space, the AG’s office said.
Syed, Baer, Kayume and Puzzo were arraigned in Queens Criminal Court Wednesday afternoon on multiple counts of bribery, money laundering and fraud, with the fifth co-conspirator expected to be arraigned in the coming days.
The Delta official had yet to be charged, the AG’s office said.
“When businesses bribe their way into lucrative contracts, everyday New Yorkers can suffer the consequences of worse service and higher costs,” state Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
“These bribery schemes impacted critical shipping services at one of the busiest airports in the nation. These individuals repeatedly broke the law, but today we are shutting down their pay-to-play schemes and holding them accountable.”
The co-defendants each face up to 15 years in prison.
The investigation involved the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, and Homeland Security Investigations.
