Another Small-Timer Falsifies Parts Conditions, Pays the Price

Another criminal case involving non-airworthy parts swappage has seen the sentencing of those involved, costing the perpetrators a year in prison and about $300,000 in restitution.

Daniel Navarro, 50 years old, was the Vice President of Sofly Aviation Services, a parts distributor. Jorge Guerrero, 71, was the firm's Procurement & Asset Management Specialist. Their grift wasn't anything particularly complex or thought out: Sofly would buy cheap parts marked "as removed", and then fake the paperwork affirming that those same pieces were airworthy, refurbished, tested, or inspected when they sold them to the end user. In fact, they did nothing to ensure the parts were genuinely overhauled and fit for duty, essentially leaving aircraft operators to reuse take-offs and bum units with the peace of mind they were genuinely trustworthy parts.

The pair had begun to purchase "as removed" parts in 2012, and continued the grift until 2019. Most of the time, the Justice Department said, "Navarro and Guerrero would use an FAA approved repair station’s FAA certificate number to falsely certify the part to have been overhauled, tested/inspected or repaired by that repair station, when in fact they never were." Similar activities have been pulled before, but the last one of note seemed to sell parts to the light aircraft and business market. Unfortunately for the traveling public, Sofly sold to Canadian air carriers Air Georgian and Porter Airlines. 

They also fell afoul of L3Harris, a U.S. Department of Defense contractor, for selling them 'overhauled' parts that were simple, as-is, no-warranty units found on the open market.

In the end, District Senior Judge Federico Moreno sentenced Navarro to 30 months in prison, and Guerrero to 12 months and a day in prison, with both sentences to be followed by 36 months of supervised release. Navarro and Guerrero were ordered to pay no less than $204,055 in joint and several restitution. A $93,309.22 forfeiture order was placed on Navarro’s property, too, which apparently resulted in an order of forfeiture against his home. They may seem a little cruel to Navarro's wife, but she was, at least on paper, Sofly Aviation Services President. She didn't appear to have had much to do with the operations of the company, so she had been left out of the criminal case by and large, but the couple's house was deemed to have been partially funded by Navarro's and Geuerrero's bogus sales, and it was an asset that could be used to claw back some money for the victims, so it had to go.

FMI: www.justice.gov