French Citizen Pleads Guilty to Fraud in Airplane Incident
| U.S. Attorney’s Office May 08, 2013 |
PHILADELPHIA—Philippe Jeannard, 61, of La Rochelle, France, pleaded guilty today to one count of fraud in connection with an identification document. U.S. District Court Judge Gene E.K. Pratter has not yet scheduled a sentencing hearing. Jeannard faces an advisory sentencing guideline range of zero to six months in prison plus deportation proceedings.
Jeannard boarded a commercial airplane on March 20, 2013, at Philadelphia International Airport. He possessed an Air France identification card of a former employee that he had altered with his name and photograph, and, with that fraudulent identification card, gained access to the plane’s cockpit.
The case was investigated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI, and the Philadelphia Police Department. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney K.T. Newton.