11 Nabbed in Airline Liquor Theft

Eleven LaGuardia Airport workers stole hundreds of thousands of mini-bottles of airline liquor and resold them to neighborhood stores in New York, authorities said Wednesday.

The employees of LSG Sky Chefs Inc. and two others pilfered more than 400,000 mini-bottles, worth about $1.5 million, from an airport storage facility over the last year, said Richard Brown, the district attorney of Queens, N.Y.

They allegedly stole cases of Dewar’s Scotch, Courvoisier cognac and Bacardi rum -- a case holds 190 bottles worth about $760 -- and resold them to local stores for about $240 each.

The stores then sold the mini-bottles for about $1.25 apiece. On flights, they sell for $4 each, authorities said.

The Irving, Texas-based LSG Sky Chefs, whose parent company is German airline Deutsche Lufthansa AG, is a flight caterer that supplies more than 260 airlines worldwide. Its spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.

The accused men include a supervisor, beverage assemblers and truck drivers for Sky Chefs and a supervisor and a warehouseman for North American Aviation.

The 11 men, all from New York, face charges of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and conspiracy and, if convicted, face prison sentences of up to seven years.

“The defendants blatantly broke the law, systematically taking liquor orders from retailers in addition to stealing the merchandise,” said Inspector General Robert Van Etten of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the region’s airports.

The men were arrested after surveillance by agents in what the authorities dubbed “Operation Swig Swag.”