Updated: Monday, 23 Jan 2012, 12:02 PM CSTPublished : Monday, 23 Jan 2012, 11:12 AM CST
Chicago – If you’ve ever waited until the last minute to buy some airline tickets, you know you can pay a pretty steep price.
FOX Chicago’s Larry Yellen, has the story of some so-called “black market” travel agents who offered last minute travel at discount prices.
The investigation led prosecutors to interview two Chicago Bears.
The black market travel agents were busted two years ago, but what’s never come out until now is that several NFL players on at least three different teams were questioned, including those two Chicago Bears who are no longer with the team.
Prosecutors wanted their evidence because the players had bought tickets and then traveled, at discount prices.
When Bears running back Garrett Wolfe scored his first NFL touchdown three years ago, he celebrated by jumping into the arms of fellow running back Jason McKie.
Nine months later and 500 miles away, a U.S. attorney in Missouri announced charges against 38 people, calling them “black market travel agents.” “I mean it’s significant,and it’s huge,” U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips said.
It was an investigation that brought Wolfe and McKie together again.
Sixteen days after that touchdown, Wolfe and McKie were questioned separately at Halas Hall by a federal prosecutor, regarding airline tickets they bought at discount prices.
Both cooperated fully, and neither was ever accused of any wrongdoing.
The Bears connection surfaced when investigators took leads from Kansas City and followed them across the country.
“One conspiracy led us to another which led us to another which led us to another. That’s how we learned that it was a nationwide scheme of black market airline tickets,” Phillips said.
The feds uncovered black market agents in six cities, including Chicago, where eleven defendants were charged.
Nationwide, the schemes raked in more than $20 million.
Here’s how it worked.
The agents purchased thousands of stolen credit and debit card numbers from computer hackers overseas. Then they purchased airline reservations using those stolen IDs, and sold the tickets to their customers, often at reduced prices.
So the travel agents pocketed the cash for tickets that were billed to unknowing strangers.
So where’s the NFL connection?
Wolfe had met one of the defendants, Edwon Simmons, when Wolfe was a senior in high school.
Simmons was a former star quarterback at Leo High School, who later had a minor league baseball career, before returning to Chicago. He mentored many youngsters, while also scouting out potential NFL talent.
He is also the half-brother of Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Jason Avante, who hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.
Simmons has pleaded guilty. He admitted using stolen identities to buy tickets to destinations like Puerto Rico and Hawaii, including travel to the 2009 NFL Pro-Bowl in Honolulu.
Wolfe and McKie, and players from two other NFL teams told federal investigators they purchased discounted tickets from Simmons.
Wolfe described three trips to Las Vegas, one to Atlanta, and one to Miami. He said Simmons told him, he was able to get the tickets through “codes.”
McKie told investigators he purchased last-minute discounted tickets from Simmons on six or seven occasions.
He said he assumed he was buying “buddy passes” or that Simmons knew someone who worked for the airlines.
Both Bears players noticed their names were often misspelled on the tickets, but thought nothing of it. The black market agents did that to cover their tracks.
Now, all 38 defendants have either pleaded or been found guilty; the only “traveler” who was charged, a woman who lied to the feds about where she got her ticket.
Steve Miller, a former assistant U.S. attorney, says everyone knows ticket prices fluctuate greatly, so the NFL players could have easily believed their tickets were legitimate.
“Airline tickets on a Monday can soar through the sky like a rocketship, and in a day or two they can fall like a stone,” Miller said.
And so Miller says while the investigation led to players being questioned, there was no basis for prosecutors to charge them.
“They don’t charge them unless there’s evidence that they were knowingly engaged in a fraud. And the mere fact that you’ve bought a deeply discounted ticket doesn’t put you on notice that there’s anything wrong with it,” Miller said.
Wolfe’s attorney says Wolfe has no comment on the Kansas City investigation.
FOX News Chicago wasn’t able to reach McKie or his attorney.
As for the Bears, a spokesperson says that as a general policy, they don’t comment on such matters, other than to say, they always cooperate fully with authorities.