New Violations Cited at Air Security Firm

Federal prosecutors say the nation’s largest airport security company has continued to hire people with criminal records to screen passengers and luggage, despite a $1.2-million fine last year for failing to check its employees’ backgrounds.

Argenbright Holdings Ltd. of Atlanta pleaded guilty in May 2000 to what the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia called “an astonishing pattern of crimes that potentially jeopardized public safety.”

But despite promises to take corrective action, the company continued to violate federal regulations governing employee background checks at 13 major airports in the United States, including Los Angeles International, according to Patrick L. Meehan, the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia.

Meehan’s accusations were made in court papers he filed Thursday, the same day that the Senate unanimously approved legislation that would put airport baggage screening in the hands of federal agencies.

Bill Barbour, president of Argenbright, said the company will contest what he described as inaccuracies in Meehan’s allegations. Barbour said a July audit by the Federal Aviation Administration found very few discrepancies in the company’s employee background checks.

“In light of the recent positive audit of our company by the FAA, we are puzzled by both the timing and substance of [Thursday’s] actions by the U.S. attorney,” Barbour said in a statement.

Argenbright employs 6,000 checkpoint personnel who screened more than 650 million passengers in the United States last year. The company was cited for labor-law violations in 2000 during its unsuccessful bid to thwart a 2 1/2-year union-organizing effort at LAX.

Meehan said that between Jan. 1, 1995, and Dec. 31, 1998, Argenbright hired dozens of people with criminal records as predeparture screeners at Philadelphia International Airport, demonstrating a “willful failure to verify their backgrounds or criminal history, while falsely certifying that the verifications had been done.”

After entering its guilty pleas, the company was sentenced in October 2000 to the $1.2-million fine and was placed on probation.

“At the time of sentencing, Argenbright sought to convince the court that it had taken a number of positive steps to address the severe weaknesses in its management and compliance structure,” Meehan said. “In fact, Argenbright’s violations continued.”

He said those violations include hiring more checkpoint screeners with criminal backgrounds, making false statements to the FAA about employee background checks, and violating FAA rules at 13 airports in Washington, New York, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles and other cities.

At LAX, an Argenbright screener was granted unescorted access to baggage and passengers prior to verification of his assertion that he had worked for another security company, Meehan said. Argenbright claimed it had verified the man’s employment, but the other security company told the FAA it had never hired the screener, the prosecutor said.