William Boos to be Sentenced to 1 ¾-to-5 ¼ Years in Prison
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. announced the guilty plea of WILLIAM BOOS, 55, a private air travel broker, for stealing more than $3 million from an international consulting firm, more than $1 million from an international art gallery, and $63,000 from a television journalist between December 2017 and December 2020. BOOS pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to one count of Grand Larceny in the First Degree. He is expected to be sentenced on September 10, 2024 to a promised sentence of 1 ¾-to-5 ¼ years in state prison, and judgement orders will be issued on behalf of all three victims.
“William Boos stole millions from private air travel clients in just three years by taking advantage of his insider access to their accounts,” said District Attorney Bragg. “This prison sentence will ensure accountability for this multi-million-dollar fraud.”
According to court documents and statements made on the record in court, and as admitted in the defendant’s guilty plea, BOOS charged a major international consulting firm with an office in Manhattan millions of dollars for flights its employees did not take between December 2017 and May 2018. BOOS had a long-standing business relationship with the firm and had access to one of its American Express credit accounts to charge the firm for legitimate private charter flights. BOOS took advantage of this relationship and charged the firm’s credit card more than $3 million, without its knowledge, for flights the firm’s employees had never requested or taken.
BOOS also stole more than $1 million from an art gallery with a Manhattan office which he had provided private air travel services. Typically, the gallery paid Direct Airway directly for its trips via wire transfers. However, in September 2019, BOOS used the art gallery’s American Express account information, without its knowledge, to pay for the flights that he had booked for the art gallery — as well as for some of his other unrelated customers — essentially charging the gallery twice for the travel. When the gallery noticed the unauthorized travel charges and contacted BOOS, he claimed that the charges had been made in error and assured the art gallery that it would receive refunds. He then sent 24 forged documents to the art gallery purporting to show refunds to the American Express account.
BOOS also stole more than $63,000 from a Manhattan-based television journalist in December 2020 when the journalist booked a roundtrip flight. BOOS sent two forged contracts purportedly signed by the journalist to the charter plane provider he brokered for the flight. In those contracts, BOOS provided the journalist’s American Express credit card information without the journalist’s knowledge. Although the journalist paid BOOS for the flights by wiring funds directly to Direct Airway, BOOS did not send this money to the charter plane provider. The charter plane provider charged the journalist’s American Express credit card account instead, resulting in the journalist being billed twice for the same flights. When confronted, BOOS blamed the charter flight company and sent forged letters purportedly issued by the company apologizing for the error. He also sent the journalist’s personal assistant forged documents purporting to show refunds to the journalist’s American Express account in the amounts of the unauthorized charges.
The investigation into BOOS and his company, Direct Airways, began after American Express notified the Manhattan D.A.’s office about the suspicious activity.
Major Economic Crimes Bureau (“MECB”) Deputy Chief Christine Payne and Assistant D.A. John Cheever are handling the prosecution of the case under the supervision of MECB Bureau Chief Michael Ohm and Assistant D.A. Jodie Kane (Chief of the Rackets Bureau and Acting Chief of the Investigation Division). Principal Financial Investigator Michael Vecchio provided financial analysis for this investigation, supervised by Irene Serrapica, Principal Deputy Bureau Chief, and Robert Demarest, Chief of Forensic Accounting and Financial Investigations. Paralegals Madison Dyer and Emma Chung and former paralegals Miranda Coombe, Anna Bruckner and Anna Jurew provided analysis and assistance in the investigation.
D.A. Bragg thanked retired NYPD Detective Armando Coutinho and Detective Oscar Nieves of the NYPD-FBI Joint Major Theft Task Force for their assistance in the investigation. D.A. Bragg also thanked the Orange County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office’s Fugitive Unit for its assistance on this matter.
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