If you lived in the Chelsea, MA area you might know Tiffany Jenkins who pleaded guilty to scamming Jet Blue out of almost a $1 million in flights.
Jenkins was a Jet Blue gate agent at Boston’s Logan Airport. Over the course of 15 months, she used her insider access to the ticketing system to adjust low-priced tickets to more expensive tickets using the override code “INVOL.”
According to the information filing from the DOJ, the “INVOL” code within the Jet Blue world of ticketing was to be used when a forced change was being made on a passenger or when dealing with a case of bereavement and no additional cost would be borne by the passenger.
Jenkins made 505 of those exchanges, for family, friends and acquaintances.
Here’s how it worked.
The traveler would send money to Jenkins (using Cash App by Square). In the following example the traveler sent Jenkins $200. The next day Jenkins purchased a rountrip flight between Las Vegas and Long Beach at a cost of $72.42 in the name of the traveler. Later that same day, Jenkins re-entered the Jet Blue system and using the “INVOL” code change and that short hop from Las Vegas to Long Beach morphed into a roundtrip from Boston to Turks and Caicos. Jet Blue told the FBI that that one transaction carried a value of $6,802.
During an interview with Jenkins by Jet Blue she demonstrated that she knew the correct way to use the “INVOL” code. She also reviewed a spreadsheet of the 505 instances in which she did the ticket swap. During a subsequent interview, she claimed she only did it for about 15-20 persons.
Jenkins motivation?
She wanted them to see the world!
If you were one of those lucky individuals, you might be getting a visit with a request to repay Jet Blue for those expensive sojourns you enjoyed.