Texas Jury Finds Mark Forkner Not Guilty on 4 Counts of Wire Fraud for Role as Chief Technical Pilot

The jury in the case of Mark Forkner, former chief technical pilot for the Boeing 737 Max, has found him not guilty on 4 counts of wire fraud.

Forkner, 49, had a major hand in the evaluation and certification of the Max, a position that led to a grand jury indictment alleging that Forkner was "scheming to defraud Boeing’s US-based airline customers," through his actions with the company. The end goal was "to obtain tens of millions of dollars for Boeing," by "withholding critical information about MCAS during the certification process, leading to its omission from the published documentation training pilots on the aircraft."

The Jury, however, disagreed, much to Forkner's benefit, returning after less than 2 hours of deliberation and finding him not guilty on 4 counts of wire fraud. His defense held that Boeing engineers failed to inform him of changes to the flight software inside the MCAS, and his indictment was little more than the selection of a scapegoat to foist the issue on an unlucky employee. The lives of 346 people, they alluded, were not on Forkner's hands alone, but a wider set of circumstances at the company. 

The trial went on for 3 days, with a few nuggets of information standing out during the presentations. Forkner's internal messages were pored over by the prosecution, especially ones in which he admits to other employees that he unknowingly misled regulators on a flight simulator system. His communications with external Boeing customers, Southwest and American Airlines, came under particular scrutiny for their position as the core of the wire fraud accusation. Forkner did not stay with Boeing for long, leaving the company months before the first crash for a gig at Southwest Airlines.

“We are very grateful that this jury and judge were so smart, so fair, so independent, that they saw through it,” said Forkner's defense attorney David Gerger. Prosecutors said they would respect the verdict, though they were disappointed with the decision. 

FMI: www.boeing.com