TSA Employee Arrested as Stealing More than 100 Items Out of Luggage and Trying to Sell Them on EBay

Pythias Brown
As a screener at Newark Liberty International Airport, Pythias Brown let nothing get past him — literally. He is accused of stealing over 100 valuable items like 66 cameras while working for the Transportation Security Administration. They really should have seen at least the missing cameras coming. The original Pythias (shown on the left) sat on a tripod, spoke in gibberish, and derived her name from pythein (πύθειν, “to rot”).

Remarkably, Brown was not caught until he made the mistake of stealing a $47,900 camera from an HBO crew and a camcorder from a CNN employee. He later tried to sell some of the items on EBay.

His haul included 66 cameras, 31 laptop computers, 20 cell phones, 17 sets of electronic games, 13 pieces of jewelry, 12 GPS devices, 11 MP3 players, eight camera lenses, six video cameras and two DVD players

If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

Passengers were suspicious when they were told in Newark to put all of their liquids in a plastic bag and all of their electronics in a bin marked Pythias.

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