Nov 30, 2008

Fake engineer used fake references to get a lighter sentence

Timothy McCormack used fake engineering credentials to work on aircraft for Qantas Airways.

He duped Qantas for nine months by posing as a licensed aircraft engineer before he was discovered in July last year. He had performed 30 maintenance checks.

The plane that later gained notoriety for an emergency landing in Bangkok was among the aircraft he checked for maintenance.

Mr McCormack produced four excellent character references to persuade a judge to give him a lighter sentence for faking his engineering credentials to work on Qantas aircraft.

The fake engineer had also falsified each of his references.

They included a fictional school counselor, which had been misspelled “councilor”, and an allegedly fictional Senior Sergeant Woodward, who purported to be the president of a fictional Hornsby Junior Australian Rules Football Club.

There is no football club by that name. All the references were formatted in the same way and signed by the same hand.

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