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Ticket Agent Arrested : 1.7 Million Bonus Air Miles Bogus

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From Associated Press

An airline ticket agent piled up 1.7 million bonus air miles via computer without leaving the ground, then sold the credits for more than $20,000, according to a published report today.

Ralf Kwaschni, 28, was arrested Sunday when he arrived for work at Kennedy International Airport and was charged with computer tampering and grand larceny, authorities said.

Kwaschni, a ticket agent for Lufthansa Airlines, used to work for American Airlines, the Daily News reported. Police said he used his computer access code to create 18 fake American Airline Advantage Accounts--racking up 1.7 million bonus air miles, according to the newspaper.

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All 18 accounts, five in Kwaschni’s name and 13 under fake ones, listed the same post office box.

Instead of exchanging the bonus miles for all the free travel, Kwaschni sold some of them for $22,500 to brokers, who used the credits to get a couple of first-class, round-trip tickets from New York to Australia, two more between London and Bermuda and one between New York and Paris, the newspaper said.

It is legitimate to sell personal bonus miles to brokers, Port Authority Detective Charles Schmidt said.

Kwaschni would create accounts under common last names, the newspaper said. When a person with one of the names was aboard an American flight and did not have an advantage account, Kwaschni would eliminate that passenger’s name from the flight list and then replace it with one from the fake accounts, the newspaper reported.

“As the plane was pulling away from the gate, this guy was at the computer, literally wiping out passengers,” Schmidt said.

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