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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

N.J. airport guard used man’s identity

Report about TSA details breaches

David Porter Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. – A Nigerian man used the identity of the victim in an unsolved murder to hide his status as an illegal immigrant while working undetected for two decades as a security guard and then a security supervisor at one of the United States’ busiest airports, authorities said Monday in announcing his arrest.

The arrest of Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole came on the day a federal report found the Transportation Security Administration’s handling of security breaches at the airport, Newark Liberty International, deficient. Newark has had a number of high-profile security breaches, the most notorious being the case of a Chinese graduate student who slipped past an exit checkpoint to say goodbye to his girlfriend in 2010, shutting down a terminal and causing huge delays affecting domestic and international traffic.

Oyewole, 54, worked at the airport, starting in 1992, under the name of Jerry Thomas, who was killed that year in New York City. He was arrested, after an anonymous tip, at his home in Elizabeth on Monday and faced charges including identity theft, authorities said. It wasn’t immediately known how Thomas’ personal information was acquired.

Police in New York didn’t say whether Oyewole was a suspect in the July 20, 1992, killing of Thomas in Queens.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the area’s main airports and other transit hubs, said Oyewole entered the United States illegally in 1989 and had worked under several contractors at the airport, most recently FJC Security Services, and supervised about 30 guards. The agency said its investigation found no indication that he used the fake identity for any reason other than to live in the United States.

Port Authority leaders had spoken with FJC officials “and will meet with them in the coming days to take every legally permissible step to recheck their security personnel on a regular basis and to protect our customers, employees and facilities,” agency spokesman Steve Coleman said.

FJC Security, which received an airport contract in 2003, said it conducted a background check on the guard as had New Jersey state police and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“In all cases, he passed the background checks,” FJC spokesman Michael McKeon said. “During his time with FJC, he had nothing in his record or his performance to indicate a cause for concern or a reason to question the state police and federal government’s background checks.”

In a statement, the TSA said it was reviewing the Port Authority’s procedures for validating employee and contractor documents.

A report released Monday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that only 42 percent of reported security breaches from January 2010 to May 2011 led to corrective action.