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Long Island resident Paul Belloisi, age 56, of Smithtown, was sentenced to nine years in prison in Brooklyn federal court on Friday, Sept. 6, for possessing and importing cocaine.
Belloisi, a former mechanic for American Airlines, was arrested in February 2020 after US Customs and Border Protection discovered 10 bricks of cocaine in an electronics compartment beneath a plane arriving from Jamaica at Kennedy International Airport in Queens .
The cocaine – with a street value of more than $250,000 – was replaced with fake bricks and sprayed with a substance that glows when illuminated with a black light.
A short time later, agents watched as Belloisi drove up to the aircraft and got inside the electronics compartment. When they confronted him, they saw that his gloves glowed under the black light, proving that he had handled the bricks, prosecutors said.
Belloisi was also found to be carrying an empty tool bag, and the lining of his jacket had cutouts large enough to hold the bricks.
In May 2023, after a weeklong trial, a federal jury convicted him of all three counts of an indictment charging him with conspiring to possess and import cocaine, and importing cocaine.
“The defendant abused his insider position at JFK Airport to help smuggle more than 25 pounds of cocaine into the United States in a highly sensitive electronics compartment of an international aircraft,” said US Attorney Breon Peace.
“This conduct not only furthers the trafficking of drugs that harms our communities, but also poses a serious threat to the security of a vital border crossing in our district and our transportation infrastructure.
“Today’s sentence demonstrates that the government takes these threats very seriously, and those who work in trusted positions at our airports and in other critical industries must know that they face serious consequences for crimes of corruption.”
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