A former JetBlue Airways flight attendant was sentenced Monday for attempting to smuggle nearly 60 pounds of cocaine worth up to $3 million in her carry-on luggage, then fleeing when pulled aside for a baggage search at Los Angeles International Airport.
Marsha Gay Reynolds, 33, sprinted down an "up" escalator and out of LAX, leaving behind her luggage, after she was randomly selected for secondary screening on March 18, 2016. The following day, she worked a JetBlue flight back to New York and surrendered to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents.
Citing her cooperation with prosecutors, a federal judge in Los Angeles has sentenced Reynolds to time she has already served in custody -- about two years. Reynolds will spend three years on supervised release.
She could have been sentenced to up to 10 years in federal prison.
A former beauty pageant contestant in Jamaica and New York University track athlete, Reynolds had been a JetBlue employee for six years. Her arrest gained national media attention.
The drug discovery was made in Terminal 4 by a Transportation Security Administration security officer who was screening the airline attendant's carry-on bags as part of a random search. As a crew member, Reynolds would ordinarily get to bypass bag screening.
As the TSA officer led Reynolds to a location to be searched, she made a cell phone call -- speaking with a heavy Jamaican accent -- then kicked off her Gucci high heels and ran down the escalator and out of the terminal.
Reynolds pleaded guilty in December 2016 to a single federal count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine. The felony charge is punishable by a 10-year mandatory minimum prison term, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Reynolds' supplier, Jamaican national Gaston Brown, was convicted at trial in February of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute the drug and other federal charges. Reynolds testified against him in Los Angeles federal court in exchange for unspecified benefits from prosecutors.
The ex-flight attendant -- a U.S. citizen who had been living with her family in Queens, New York -- was paid thousands of dollars for smuggling drugs and money through LAX and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on about 10 occasions, starting in October 2015, using her crew member status to avoid security screening at both airports, prosecutors said.
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Reynolds' abandoned luggage was found to contain 11 individually wrapped packages -- labeled "Big Ranch" -- that were taken to the Los Angeles police's Forensic Science Division, where the contents tested positive for cocaine, court papers show.
"It takes a very bold criminal to run through the airport -- and come back the next day and flee the district," Assistant U.S. Attorney Reema M. El-Amamy said after an early hearing in the case.
After Reynolds' arrest, Brown, 41, fled to Jamaica under a false name. He is scheduled to be sentenced in August.
Following the foiled drug-smuggling attempt, Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Police Officers Association, called for 100 percent screening of all airport employees.
