IAH luggage thefts an inside job, police say

Police have arrested five men in connection with the theft of dozens of pieces of luggage from Bush Intercontinental Airport — and they say it was all an inside job. The five men worked for Menzies Aviation Group, a British company that provides luggage handling and ground services for Bush and several other U.S. airports, so they were in an ideal position to pick off a few bags here and there. "These were not stolen from the terminals," Capt. Rick Bownds with HPD's airport division said. "They were stolen as they were making connections through secure sections of the airport."

The question so far is how the men — twins Ricardo and Manuel Aguilar, Carlos Osorio, Erick Perez and Daniel Venegas — got the bags out without anyone noticing. Though airport service vehicles aren't checked when they're leaving the airport, Houston Airport System spokeswoman Marlene McClinton said security inside the baggage handling areas is "comprehensive and layered," including video cameras and HPD officers patrolling on foot and horseback. "The key thing is that they are stealing bags from what should be about the most secure area in Houston," Joe Gutheinz, a former security official with the FAA, told the Chronicle. "If they can walk bags out of the airport like that, they can walk drugs out of the airport just as easily."

Sixty of the stolen bags were recovered from a trash bin at a pet store near the airport on Dec. 26, and 90 more were found over the weekend. "This is the largest recovery of stolen baggage that I'm aware of since I've been at the airport," Bownds said. "If we keep turning up baggage, [the investigation] is going to go on for a while."