The Polar Air Cargo fraud case has reached a breakthrough point with the decision by the last defendant accused of taking part in the scheme to plead guilty instead of going to trial.
Skye Xu was scheduled for trial on October 28, but has now changed his plea to guilty, reported ch-aviation. Xu is due to be sentenced on February 25 next year.
The US District Court for the Southern District of New York has not released a statement on the matter as yet.
The court has been steadily sentencing defendants that pleaded guilty in the case since 10 were charged last year for taking part in the massive, long running scheme to defraud the cargo airline of more than $32m in revenue.
In addition to Polar executives involved in the case, there were also defendants that owned and operated various Polar vendors and customers.
Xu is amongst these. His company, Sky X Airlines, was contracted by Polar Air Cargo between September 2020 and July 2021 to provide charter capacity and Xu is understood to have paid off Polar executives to secure favourable deals.
Earlier this month, former vice president of marketing, revenue management and network planning Abilash Kurien was handed a 32-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
Former vice president of operations, system performance, and quality Carlton Llewellyn was also recently sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud in January.
In August, former executive Robert Schirmer was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his part in the scheme.
Additionally, former chief operating officer Lars Winkelbauer was in May sentenced to four years in prison taking part in the scheme.
As well as Xu, more defendants are due to be sentenced in the first half of next year.
The defendants involved in the case were accused of taking part in a fraud scheme that operated for over a decade and resulted in the company losing an estimated $52m, while impacting nearly all operations. The scheme allegedly saw relations with GSAs, freight forwarders, handling and trucking service providers corrupted.
The fraudulent activity is understood by law officials to have spanned at least in or about 2009 through to about July 2021.
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