2 charged with stealing $22 million from Delta

Two men have been charged with defrauding Delta Air Lines after stealing $22 million.

Paul Anderson and Michael Yedor were indicted by a federal grand jury on 96 counts each of mail fraud.

U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said Anderson, 57, of Apple Valley, Minn., and Yedor, 62, of Los Angeles originally schemed to defraud Northwest Airlines. According to information presented in court, Anderson was hired by Northwest in 1979 and became a Minneapolis-based Delta employee in December 2009, when the airlines merged.

Yedor created a fake company, Airborne Voice and Data, that submitted invoices to Northwest for goods that were never provided and services not rendered. Yates said Yedor sent the invoices to Anderson, who approved them in exchange for a cut of the money netted from the scheme.

The defendants began sending the invoices to Northwest in 2004, then sent them to Delta after the merger. Prosecutors said they stole roughly $22 million from the two airlines between 2004 and 2013.

Prosecutors said Delta is cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of the two defendants. Their indictment was unsealed after last weekend, when Yedor was arrested in San Diego aboard his motor yacht.

Original Source: USAToday