Ventura County heli mechanic used old parts, risking crashes: DOJ

A Ventura County man and his business are facing 10 federal charges for allegedly lying about the age of replacement helicopter parts and, by extension, raising the chances of a crash.

Jared Michael Swensen, 48, of Ventura was arrested Tuesday, and he and his Oxnard-based company Light Helicopter Depot are charged with two counts of wire fraud and eight counts of fraud involving aircraft parts, the United States Department of Justice said in a news release.

Swensen and his company are accused of overhauling and maintaining helicopters using older parts, though they told customers the parts were newer or had been overhauled.

Instead, those parts, including critical pieces like main rotor blades and spindles, were “closer to their life limit than [Swensen and his company] represented,” and “if these parts failed, a helicopter likely would crash,” prosecutors said.

“Swensen and his company allegedly made materially false entries in the helicopter’s maintenance logbook and fraudulently altered sales orders and packing slips to correspond with the false entries – misrepresenting the age of the helicopter parts as being years newer than their actual age,” the DOJ said. “The defendants also fraudulently altered Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) release certificates – used to certify that an aircraft part was airworthy – to falsely claim that the certificate was issued more than two years after its actual issuance date.”

Swensen is expected to make his initial appearance in U.S. District Court Tuesday afternoon.

If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud count and 15 years for each count of fraud involving aircraft parts.

Furthermore, if convicted, Light Helicopter Depot could be fined up to $10 million for each aircraft parts fraud count and $1 million for each wire fraud count.