A former American Airlines mechanic was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison for helping smuggle 25 pounds of cocaine into JFK Airport on an international aircraft, according to federal prosecutors.
Paul Belloisi was convicted in May 2023 on three counts charging him with conspiring to possess and import cocaine, and importing cocaine.
Belloisi used to work as a mechanic for American Airlines at JFK Airport when prosecutors said he was caught hidden cocaine bricks inside sensitive areas of a plane that had arrived from Jamaica.
Prosecutors said during a routine search of American Airlines flight 1349 on February 4, 2020, Customs and Border Protection officers discovered 10 bricks of cocaine “hidden inside an electronics compartment” under the cockpit. Officers were able to replace the bricks with fakes which were covered with a substance that glowed under a black light. Belloisi was arrested after he drove up and went inside the electronics compartment, his hands glowing under that black light showing he had touched the fake bricks.
He was carry an empty tool bag “and the lining of his jacket had cutouts sufficiently large enough to hold the bricks,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said.
The cocaine was worth approximately $250,000.
“The defendant abused his insider position at JFK Airport to help smuggle more than 25 pounds of cocaine into the United States in a highly sensitive electronics compartment of an international aircraft,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. “This conduct not only furthers the trafficking of drugs that harms our communities, but also poses a serious threat to the security of a vital border crossing in our district and our transportation infrastructure.”