A Southwest Airlines employee has been charged with stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of airline vouchers using passengers’ names…
How a Southwest employee stole vouchers from an airline
The St. Louis County District Attorney’s Office has charged a former Southwest employee with stealing hundreds of flight vouchers valued at approximately $79,000 under the names of passengers. The individual in question is a former customer service representative for the airline at St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL).
So how did this person get caught? Between August 1 and September 28, 2023, Southwest conducted an internal investigation and found that an employee was printing coupons under passengers’ names. When confronted, the person confessed to the scheme and was willing to return the remaining coupons.
Police escorted the employee to his airport locker, where he surrendered 119 travel vouchers valued at $36,300. He confessed to creating flight vouchers totaling approximately $79,000. He used the vouchers both for himself and sold them on at least four separate occasions.
What kind of vouchers did he print, exactly? Although it wasn’t explicitly stated, I suspect they were “Southwest LUV vouchers.” Southwest employees have the ability to issue travel vouchers, which are typically issued when passengers have an unfavorable travel experience. At least, that’s the most logical way an employee could print vouchers on someone else’s behalf, since they’re transferable.
Keep in mind that Southwest employees are also eligible for travel on the airline on a “when available” basis, so it’s quite a bit of stealing from the airline to get positive travel on a “when available” basis rather than traveling on a “when available” basis.
This pales in comparison to a previous incident
This is not the first time a Southwest employee has been charged in such an incident. In fact, this is practically peanuts compared to a plot uncovered last year in which a Southwest customer service representative at Chicago Midway Airport (MDW) stole nearly $1.9 million worth of vouchers from the airline.
This former Southwest employee was accused of creating and selling nearly $2 million worth of travel vouchers over the course of several months.
This involved “Southwest LUV vouchers.” The individual used fictitious customer names to generate these vouchers without Southwest’s knowledge or consent. He then sold the vouchers for cash below market value. It is unknown how much below “market value” he sold these vouchers and how much cash he generated from them.
Regardless, this latest Southwest fraud attempt was only about 4% the size of the previous one. I wonder if the person who committed the latest fraud attempt was inspired by the previous employee and just wanted to do it on a smaller scale in hopes of getting away with it, or what.
Regardless, it seems like Southwest is looking into this, and it’s unlikely to go unnoticed if it’s happening on such a scale, especially since presumably each of the vouchers issued is tied to the employee’s ID. Plus, keeping these vouchers at your workplace is probably not the smartest idea.
Conclusion
A former Southwest Airlines employee has been charged with attempting to steal $79,000 worth of vouchers from the airline. It’s interesting how he got away with it for so long, but ultimately it didn’t work out. That’s bad, but nothing compared to the $1.9 million worth of vouchers another Southwest employee stole.
Maybe it’s time for Southwest to take a closer look at how employees issue these vouchers.
What do you think of this Southwest coupon program?
