Southwest Airlines Employee Indicted For Stealing And Reselling $15,000 Worth Of Travel Per Day

A Chicago Midway airport customer service agent for Southwest Airlines has been indicted for selling almost $2 million in travel vouchers.

After working for the airline for about three years ago, the man figured out that he could issue customer service “LUV vouchers” to compensate passengers… and could do this even when there wasn’t actually a disserviced passenger. So he generated them using fake names, and then sold them at a discount to face value.

One Mile at a Time points out that generating $1.9 million in travel vouchers over 120 days means means stealing over $15,000 per day.

  • The vouchers were $200 – $500 each
  • That likely means creating about 50 fraudulent vouchers per day. Every single day, weekday and weekend, whether working or not.
  • So it probably means generating even more vouchers than that per workday. Did this guy ever do actual customer service work?


Southwest Airlines Check-in Mockup

Eventually though he was caught, the scheme only lasted four months. Here’s the actual indictment.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. To me, there has got to be more to the story. I doubt this GA could issue this many fake vouchers at work every day without his co workers knowing about the scheme. The other thing is this SW outpost must issue a ton of vouchers everyday. Otherwise, the data should have identified an extreme outlier situation in pretty short order.
    I’d say there might be a lot more to come before this story wraps up.

  2. You’d think WN’s audit software would easily see that he was generating a gigantic amount of vouchers relative to his colleagues. Or spot all the fake names.

  3. Or WN generates / gives away so much “funny money” per day that $15,000 is an unnoticeable drop in the bucket in real time. If it only lasted 120 days, its probable that a quarterly control (a review) of the liability accrual for un-redeemed vouchers raised a bunch of questions that was easily unraveled.

  4. I wonder how many fraudulent vouchers are still being issued…..and I’m not just talking about Southwest!!

  5. @Gary: If you’re going to delete my comments pointing out you can’t be bothered to run your posts through any number of software options that check grammar before posting them, you could at least correct the errors I highlights for you.

    “After working for the airline for about three years ago” is still not a sentence or part thereof, at least in English. Did he work for about 3 years, or about 3 years ago?

  6. The psychology of embezzlement is fascinating to me. There are endless examples of people who likely could have kept their scheme going indefinitely at a low level, but they seemingly always increase their theft until they get caught. If the guy issues one bogus certificate per shift, he can probably net $25k/year without raising eyebrows, but there is no way $15k/day doesn’t get noticed.

  7. Doug,

    You assume they all get caught. We never find out the patient, disciplined ones.

  8. I’m uncertain why a fellow reader regularly criticizes Gary for trivial matters. The site is imminently readable, the content timely and relevant to readers.
    I’m grateful Gary shares travel news. Rather than berate Gary needlessly, there are many alternative sites.

  9. Chris Raehl says:
    June 9, 2023 at 12:03 am
    @Gary: If you’re going to delete my comments pointing out you can’t be bothered to run your posts through any number of software options that check grammar before posting them, you could at least correct the errors I highlights for you.

    …OK Chris,
    “I ‘highlights’ for you” ??? Grammar check !!!

  10. Southwest Airlines is known to hire criminals! One woman stole commission checks, others stole electronics, jewelry, and cash from luggage at LAX where I worked before. Then, they wouldn’t let me resume my work after an OJI incident. How stupid and unconventional is that Gary Kelly??
    Allen L. Aka: KING LUDA. LAX

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