Denver TSA agents fired over scheme to grope attractive male passengers, police say
Transportation Security Administration agents screen travelers at Denver International Airport in 2003.
Two Transportation Security Administration agents who worked at Denver International Airport have been fired over a scheme that involved manipulating screening equipment so one of them could grope passengers he found attractive, according to the Denver Police Department.
An anonymous tip about the scheme led to an internal TSA investigation, which in turn led to the firings, according to a Denver police report. The report was recently released after media inquiries.
A TSA investigator told police that one of the two agents, a man, would signal the other agent, a woman, when a man he wanted to touch was approaching the screening area.
The female agent would falsely tell the scanning machine that the traveler was a woman, so the system would indicate an abnormality in the traveler’s groin area and allow the male agent to perform a pat-down search, according to the report.
During the pat-down, the male agent would touch the “passenger’s front groin and buttocks area with the palms of his hands, which is contradictory to TSA searching policy,” the report said.
The female agent told the TSA investigator she had participated in the scheme at least 10 times, the police report said.
The fired agents’ identities were not released.
No criminal charges have been filed by the district attorney’s office because no victims have been identified, according to the police report.
The TSA did not immediately reply to a request for additional comment.
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