Man Accused of Bilking Airline of Flight Coupons

A Westminster man faces mail fraud charges for allegedly bilking United Airlines of frequent-flier coupons worth $63,000, federal officials said Wednesday.

J. Michael Roca, 33, used his position as a customer service agent for Marketing Performance Innovation, a Long Beach company that manages United’s Mileage Plus frequent-flier program, to create phony accounts, the FBI here said in a prepared statement.

A complaint filed against Roca by the U.S. attorney’s office says that between Oct. 31, 1988, and Jan. 12, 1989, Roca allegedly used MPI’s computers to establish 10 Mileage Plus accounts in the names of relatives or friends of relatives. He allegedly put more than 2.3 million miles into those accounts.

When 20,000 miles had been entered into one of the accounts, the computer would automatically generate an award, which was then mailed to the account holder.

Roca would then have the account holders sign the awards over to himself or to others, the FBI said. Roca allegedly sold about $10,000 worth of the awards at a percentage of their face value to ticket brokers in Texas and Arizona.

As a result of Roca’s activities, the FBI said, 38 United Airlines tickets were obtained fraudulently, resulting in a loss to the airline of $62,978.

Roca is due to appear before a federal magistrate within 30 days.