Canyon Country Man Pleads Guilty to Aircraft Parts Fraud

A 46-year-old Canyon Country businessman described by prosecutors as “a one-man crime wave” pleaded guilty Monday to nearly a dozen charges related to fraudulent operation of his Thousand Oaks aircraft parts business, officials said.

Aman Kahn entered the pleas in U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon’s courtroom in Los Angeles as part of a deal with prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark Byrne said.

Byrne said Kahn sold brokers used jet parts which he refurbished and passed off as new. The brokers then sold the parts to airlines.

Investigators are still trying to determine how many made their way into either commercial or military aircraft, where they could malfunction and cause a crash, Byrne said. Kahn had thousands of these parts in inventory at Advanced Aerospace Inc. in Thousand Oaks, Byrne said.

Other allegations against Kahn were that he filed fraudulent invoices for reimbursement of $500,000 for parts he claimed to have manufactured for the Department of Defense; that he claimed $150,000 in tax refunds by falsely listing his wife and another man as employees of Advanced Aerospace Inc., and that he applied for a U.S. passport while he already held one, Byrne said.

“Yeah, he’s a one-man crime spree,” Byrne said. “It’s a great resolution to the case.”

The investigation involved agents from nine government agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, State Department, U.S. Navy and Internal Revenue Service.

The charges against Kahn carry a maximum sentence of 80 years in federal prison and up to a $3.7-million fine, but under terms of the plea agreement he will probably face seven or eight years in prison, Byrne said. The judge will determine the fine at Kahn’s sentencing on Feb. 5, Byrne said.