A British Airways supervisor has been accused of running a £3 million immigration scam from his check-in desk at Heathrow and is now on the run in India.
The 24-year-old is said to have charged customers £25,000 to help them fly with BA without the correct visa documents.
The suspect carried out the scam for five years while working at Heathrow Terminal 5.
He fled the UK from Heathrow to India with his ground services partner after being arrested and bailed, The Sun reports.
His customers, mostly from India, would pay to fly into the UK on a temporary visitor visa, before the BA workers arranged them flights elsewhere with false documents.
Other clients include UK-based asylum seekers who were scared of returning to their origin countries.
Canadian officials eventually discovered the scam after migrants landing in Vancouver or Toronto off a BA flight would claim asylum immediately upon arrival.
They found the same BA boss was checking in all the passengers and was falsely claiming they had legitimate electronic travel authorisation documents.
A source told The Sun: ‘He exploited a loophole knowing that immigration checks are no longer carried out by officials but are left to airline staff.
‘By inputting wrong data, and claiming eTA documents had been secured, he got people to countries they had no permission to enter in the first place.
‘On arrival, the bogus passengers would shred their documents and claim asylum.’
A spokesman for BA said: ‘We are assisting the authorities with their investigation.’
