DJ who sold fake jet-engine parts gets 4 years in jail

A former aircraft-parts trader was sentenced to more than four years in prison Monday for selling 60,000 falsified components to airline customers worldwide, forcing them to ground their jets and tear down engines to identify rogue pieces. Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala, the previous director of AOG Technics Ltd., was handed a prison term of four years and eight months at Southwark Crown Court. Dressed in a navy blue three-piece suit, Zamora Yrala spoke only to confirm his name. In December, he pleaded guilty to a single count of fraudulent trading, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment. [caption id="attachment_57295559" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] AOG Technics Director Jose Alejandro Zamora Yrala in June. (Courtesy/Bloomberg)[/caption] Zamora Yrala, 38, sold the falsified components to customers between 2019 and 2023, lawyers for the Serious Fraud Office said. He caused almost £40 million ($54 million) in damages. The verdict marks the downfall for a man who rose from obscurity in his native Venezuela as a part-time electronic-dance DJ to a linchpin in the lucrative market for aircraft parts. Zamora Yrala ran the business from his home near London for several years, selling thousands of components that were outright fake or had falsified documentation to mask their origin, lawyers for the SFO said. Judge Simon Picken said Zamora Yrala showed remorse for his actions and took into account his guilty plea. He will likely serve less than half of his sentence. “What you did was reckless at best and utterly inexcusable,” Picken said. After Bloomberg News first reported on the discovery of fabricated paperwork, carriers including Delta Air Lines Inc., American Airlines Group Inc. and Ryanair Holdings Plc found parts sold by AOG on their planes, forcing them to undertake complex and expensive repairs. EasyJet Plc and Jet2 Plc were also among the airlines that ended up with parts from AOG in their engines, the lawyers said. The scandal shed a light on the global parts trade that is highly regulated in an industry obsessed with safety but also offered loopholes to fabricate documentation and sell components for more than they were really worth. Some of the parts sold by AOG ended up in such components as CFM International Inc.’s CFM56 engine that’s used on planes including the Boeing Co. 737 and the Airbus SE A320 types, the most widely flown civil aircraft. Engineers at TAP Air Portugal’s maintenance subsidiary first discovered the issue in 2023. From thereon, other airlines made similar discoveries, creating a global dash by airlines to tear down affected engines and remove the compromised components. Safran SA, which manufactures CFM engines through a joint venture with General Electric Co., has said that paperwork had been forged to mask the origin and condition of parts. The UK Serious Fraud Office raided Zamora Yrala’s home south of London later in 2023 and arrested him for suspected fraud. Zamora Yrala established AOG in Hove, a sleepy seaside town on the southern English coast, in 2015, corporate records show. The company came with a veneer of respectability, boasting of warehouses in the UK, Singapore, Frankfurt and Miami. Authorities say that the actual number of AOG employees remains unclear, with only four individuals on the payroll, including Zamora Yrala, his wife, her brother and the couple’s nanny. Emails sent to customers contained names that showed no link to the company, casting down on their actual existence, the SFO said. In some cases, AOG allegedly sold refurbished used parts with paperwork claiming they were brand-new, potentially netting huge profits in the process. “Mr. Zamora cut corners in order that he could trade more easily and more speedily,” his lawyer, Nicola Howard, said in court. “It is hard to envisage that he foresaw the actual ramifications” of the scam, she said. Zamora Yrala believed he was not supplying parts with safety issues, Howard said. But the judge said it couldn’t be known if the aircraft parts that were sold were brand new or not. The CFM56 is by far the most widely flown engine, with more than 20,000 units still in service. And given the global nature of aviation, parts with fabricated certificates quickly showed up everywhere, from the US to China to Australia. Forgeries turned up at an engine services provider northeast of London, a parts supplier in Florida, a maintenance firm in Scandinavia, an airline in Africa and another maintenance outfit incorporated in Germany, among others. Cargo Facts will present four invaluable events for airfreight professionals in 2026, the next of which is <a style="color: #ff0000;" href="https://cargofactsevents.com/asia/?utm_campaign=22235567-CF%20Asia%202026&utm_source=Editorial&utm_medium=article%20event%20footer&utm_term=CF%20website&utm_content=Learn%20More&utm_source=Weekly+Update+-+Cargo+Facts&utm_campaign=fbe548904b-CF+Update_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_621baa6827-fbe548904b-40083601&mc_cid=fbe548904b&mc_eid=adbe8bb0b4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cargo Facts Asia on March 23-25. To see the agendas and register for the events, visit CargoFactsEvents.com .

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