An illegal immigrant worked undetected at Newark Liberty International Airport for 20 years, and used a dead man's identity to acquire a top position in airport security, officials said.The man was known to co-workers as Jerry Thomas, and for nearly 20 years he has guarded some of the most secure areas of one of the nation's busiest airports.
He was arrested Monday after authorities discovered he is really an illegal Nigerian immigrant by the name of Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole (among other alilases) who entered the country in 1989, officials said.
CBS Station WCBS reports Oyewole, 54, allegedly assumed the identity of a dead man to get a top security job at the airport. He was arrested at his Elizabeth, N.J., home following an anonymous tip, officials said.
"In this case, the defendant utilized an elaborate and complex scheme of identity theft to defraud his employer, the State of New Jersey, the federal government and the Port Authority," Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Inspector General Robert Van Etten said.
The revelation came the same day that the Inspector General's Office of the Transportation Security Administration released a report saying that TSA officials at Newark Liberty took corrective actions in fewer than half (42 percent) of the security breaches shown in its records.
The OIG also said TSA does not have a comprehensive oversight program in order to collate information on security breaches and, consequently, cannot monitor trends or make improvements to security.
WCBS correspondent Marcia Kramer reports that Oyewole somehow obtained the birth certificate and Social Security number of a man murdered in Queens in 1992. He used that identity to obtain a New Jersey driver's license, a state security guard license, airport identification and even credit cards, officials said.
"Jerry Thomas" worked security at Newark, and had access to the tarmac and passenger planes without ever being detected, officials said. At the time of his arrest he supervised 30 other guards, Kramer reported.
Authorities want to know how he got the ID made and whether he was involved in the man's death. The NYPD is checking his fingerprints to see if they match those at the scene of the still-unsolved murder.
The TSA, which claims to be doing its job as they grope little kids and the elderly, had an illegal immigrant using a murdered man's ID working a top security job at Newark Airport
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Seriously?!?. At this point we should abolish the TSA and start over. Besides being focused on procedure rather than on actually catching terrorists, they have become a national embarrassment. Between groping and scarring crying 4 year old girls, medal of honor winners, Henry Kissinger and Geraldo, the fact that they had a major security risk (given the fact that nobody knows how he got the murdered man's ID and therefore could have been the murderer himself) as head of security at a major airport is just the last straw.
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