Jewellery stolen by TSA worker, surveillance footage deleted when traveler complained

Deleted evidence: After those 30 days, security footage like this one seen here, that may have captured the alleged theft had been deleted by the TSA

My jewellery was snatched by a TSA worker and they deleted the surveillance footage when I complained, claims passenger

dailymail.co.uk | Oct 28, 2012

By Nina Golgowski

A Boston woman claims TSA agents walked off with thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery from her luggage, amid a growing number of similar cases spanning the U.S.

Terri Ivester says it was an agent at Logan International Airport who stopped her at a security checkpoint took the bag, and returned it with the jewellery missing

‘The TSA agent holds my backpack up, says there’s a water bottle in this backpack, I’m going to have to take that,’ Mrs Ivester told CBS Boston.

Grabbing her bag, she says the agent left the area to remove the bottle.

400 TSA agents caught stealing passenger’s items

It wasn’t until she had arrived at her final destination in Chicago for a family Christening that she realized several pieces were missing.

‘I’m ready to put on my jewellery and I can’t find it,’ she said, claiming to be missing four pieces totalling $3,700.

‘It had gone through the scanner. I think they saw the jewels and I think they took them,’ she said.

Included in her theft she said was an 18-inch strand of pearls and a double stranded pearl bracelet featuring diamond baguettes.

Adding to her outrage, she says the TSA has notified her that any surveillance footage capturing her trip has since been erased.

While in the past security cameras have been used to capture theft, most recently in the news at New Jersey’s Newark airport, the TSA says they save the footage for only 30 days.

Mrs Ivester says that most of those days were consumed by her filing a report.

Since 2011, more than $60,000 in claims have been filed in Boston, with the TSA reimbursing less than $3,000 of them, CBS reports.

Unfortunately, Mrs Ivester’s case is similar to hundreds of others pouring in across the country.

In last 10 years, 382 TSA agents across the U.S. have been fired for theft.

In Boston, out of thousands hired, Logan’s Federal Security Director George Naccara said only six have been fired.

On a list of the top U.S. airports for TSA employees fired for theft, the airport competes with Denver International and San Diego International for 17th place because of those six thefts.

As the TSA puts it, collectively the number of officers fired ‘represents less than one-half of one per cent of officers that have been employed,’ they said in a statement obtained by ABC.