A former employee of an airline ground contractor will spend 16 months in federal prison for orchestrating a complex ticketing and voucher fraud scheme that spanned over two years. Chaculvin Hayes, a 37-year-old resident of Jacksonville, Florida, received his sentence on Monday following an FBI investigation into systemic vulnerabilities at Hollywood Burbank Airport. Between early 2017 and late 2019, Hayes leveraged his position with GAT Airline Ground Support to manipulate internal airline databases for carriers including United, Delta, and American Airlines.
During his tenure, Hayes abused the industry standard known as the waivers and favors system. Originally designed for customer service agents to assist passengers facing extraordinary travel hurdles, the mechanism allowed Hayes to bypass standard ticketing rules. Investigators discovered that he systematically bypassed first-class upgrade fees, altered travel dates without penalty, and generated numerous Electronic Travel Coupons without authorization. Operating under the pseudonym Neeve Andrews, Hayes sold these fraudulently obtained tickets and vouchers directly to third-party buyers in exchange for cash payments.
Federal authorities revealed that Hayes also modified hundreds of Passenger Name Records to conceal the issuance of the illicit vouchers. Following his guilty plea in June to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, United States District Judge John F. Walter handed down the 16-month sentence alongside a mandatory restitution order totaling $602,886.18, which Hayes and his co-conspirators must pay back. Court records and public profiles indicate that Hayes also pursued creative work as a musician and dancer prior to his federal conviction.
Ex-Airline Ground Worker Sentenced to Federal Prison for $600K Ticketing Scam
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