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TSA Airport Screener Steals Over $200,000 in Gadgets, Almost Gets Away With It

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Transportation Security Administration baggage screener Pythias Brown is the reason you hate flying with expensive gear in your bag, especially if you ever flew out of Newark airport. Over the last few years, he stole at least $200,000 worth of electronics. Not just a camcorder here, a laptop there, or an Xbox 360 or two, either. No, this guy had balls. Among his biggest hauls—literally—was an HBO employee’s $47,900 camera. And the TSA was totally clueless about it. He was finally caught after CNN found a camera he had stolen from them up for sale on eBay. When the USPS and local police tracked him down and raided his place, they found they found 66 cameras, 31 laptops, jewelry, camera lenses, GPS devices and more. So yeah, how does a TSA screener systematically walk out of the airport with more gadgets than Best Buy—hell, with some gear you can’t even buy there—without a single agent ever noticing? I guess if you ever check anything actually valuable, you might want avoid Newark (not that there aren’t a million more reasons to avoid Newark). [Gadling via BoingBoing Photo: Flickr/Joel Franusic ]

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