NEW YORK — A former American Airlines aircraft mechanic was sentenced on Sep 6 to nine years in prison after being convicted of trying to smuggle cocaine hidden beneath the cockpit of a flight to New York from Jamaica.

Paul Belloisi, 56, of Smithtown, New York, was sentenced by US District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn, after being convicted in May 2023 of conspiring to possess cocaine, conspiring to import cocaine and importing cocaine.

The case arose from a routine search of American flight 1349 following its Feb 4, 2020 arrival at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where Belloisi had been an American mechanic for more than two decades, from Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Prosecutors said custom officers found 10 cocaine bricks weighing 11.6 kg in an electronics compartment beneath the cockpit, and replaced them with fake bricks sprayed with a substance that glows under a special black light.

Belloisi allegedly drove up to the plane before it could take off again, and entered the electronics compartment.

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