On Thursday, a former Boeing Co. chief technical pilot was charged with defrauding federal regulators reviewing the company's 737 MAX plane, obstructing the capacity to safeguard air travelers and leaving "pilots in the lurch," according to the U.S. Justice Department.
A grand jury in Texas charged 49-year-old Mark Forkner on six charges of conspiring to defraud Boeing's U.S.-based airline clients in order to collect tens of millions of dollars for the company, officials said.
Based on court documents, Forkner provided the FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group with "materially false and incomplete information" about a new component of the Boeing 737 MAX's avionics called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System in the months leading up to the FAA's decision to give the plane flight clearance in 2017.
Two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX over a five-month period were linked to MCAS, a software that automatically pushes the plane's nose down in certain conditions, which caused the FAA to ground the plane for 19 months, until its lifting in November last year.
The FAA and Boeing both declined to comment. An attorney for Forkner did not reply to a request for comment right away.
Forkner reportedly "withheld important information from regulators" in order to save Boeing money, according to Chad Meacham, the acting U.S. attorney for Northern Texas.
According to a statement, Forkner's callous decision to defraud the FAA impeded the agency's ability to protect airline passengers and left pilots in the dark regarding certain 737 MAX flight controls.
After striking a deferred prosecution deal with the U.S. Justice Department over the MAX crashes, which cost Boeing more than $20 billion, Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion in fines and compensation in January.
Boeing's conduct was criticized in the January deal, which stated that the company will be held "responsible for its workers' criminal misconduct."
Forkner is scheduled to appear in court for the first time on Friday in Fort Worth, Texas.
He is facing two charges of interstate commerce fraud involving airplane parts and four counts of wire fraud.
If found guilty of the charges, Forkner could spend decades behind bars.
