Bogus Qantas engineer is jailed

An Australian man, who faked being a Qantas engineer for 10 months, has been sentenced to at least two years in jail for endangering thousands of lives.

Timothy McCormack, 26, pleaded guilty to 42 charges of deception, including forging an engineer's licence.

Mr McCormack posed as a supervising engineer checking 30 Qantas 747 aircraft leaving Sydney airport.


Photo from here.

Before being exposed in July 2007, he is said to have put the lives of 12,000 people at risk.

During sentencing at a district court in Sydney, Judge Mark Marien said that "the potential consequences of that course of conduct might have been catastrophic".

The judge also criticised Mr McCormack for presenting four forged character references at an earlier hearing, in order to get a lighter prison term.