Florida Pilot, Mechanic Face Federal Fraud Charges

A Florida pilot and an aircraft maintenance technician were arraigned in U.S. District Court last month by the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General on charges of conspiracy to commit aircraft parts fraud. According to the allegations, in June 2012, the mechanic, James Michael Schiller, completed an inspection on a twin-engine aircraft and found it to be non-airworthy. He subsequently removed the serviceable components from the aircraft, which was reported to the FAA as totally “destroyed or scrapped” and was therefore deregistered. 

At a later date, Ulpiano Luis Amy, the co-defendant, obtained engines and propellers from a crashed airplane and supplied them to Schiller, who then installed them on the supposedly destroyed aircraft. Schiller is accused of hiding these actions by failing to record the installations in the aircraft’s logbook, as is mandated by FAA regulations. The complaint states that Amy then submitted false documents to the FAA certifying the airworthiness of the aircraft, with the plan to sell it to an unsuspecting buyer. Among the documents submitted was a bill of sale in which he is accused of forging the seller’s signature, which carries an additional count of falsely registering an aircraft with the FAA.