MadScott sez, "TSA Screener Pythias Brown walked off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of passengers' belongings without ever being observed by the TSA, selling the items on Ebay (apparently he was good about customer service).

Pythias started small, stealing cameras, laptop computers, gaming consoles and eventually moved on to the good stuff including a video camera belonging to CNN, and a $47,900 camera stored inside the bag of an HBO employee.

The items were sold on Ebay, and as you can see from his feedback listing, these were not cheap items.

His greed eventually came back to haunt him, when CNN found one of their cameras listed on Ebay. With a little help from the local police department and the USPS, Brown was apprehended.

When agents entered his house, they found 66 cameras, 31 laptop computers, jewelry, lenses, GPS devices and more.

The total value of the stolen items is well over $200,000, and if you have ever lost an expensive item when flying from Newark Liberty Airport, you'll be thrilled to hear that the TSA is taking the matter "seriously". News like this just reinforces the need to keep anything of value out of your checked bags.

Of course, this also makes me wonder just how on earth a TSA agent is able to leave the sterile area of his or her local airport with a $47,900 camera hidden in their bag. We passengers get screened, so perhaps it is time to start screening TSA staff when they enter and leave the airport?

TSA screener ripped off hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of electronics from passengers, TSA itself didn't notice - Boing Boing

I find it a little disturbing that he was able to get away with all this.
If he was able to sneak all of that "out", how hard do you think it would be for him to "put" something extra in somebody's duffle bag going on the plane...

And it wasn't even the TSA group that busted him...

Also makes you wonder how hard people look for "lost" luggage items...

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"As in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing, when their credit ran out, the game stopped."
--Marriner S. Eccles, FDR's fed Chairman. (1951)

The government regulated the airport screeners after 911 (STUPID!)...

Now they're "government workers"...got the union to back them up whenever they get accused of sneezing...

If they would been part of the airports workers themselves )private sector), the airport would have its own rules and regulations in place to prevent this sort of thing...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd