Ex-TSA agent sentenced to jail for tricking woman into showing breasts at security

A former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent has been sentenced to 60 days in jail for tricking a woman into showing her breasts during a screening at the Los Angeles International Airport. 

Johnathon Lomeli, 23, pleaded no contest on Friday for a felony charge of false imprisonment related to the June 10, 2019 incident, according to the California attorney general’s office. 

Lomeli, who was arrested in February over the episode, will be required to take 52 classes to address sexual compulsion and be banned from working as a security guard. 

“We all have the right to be treated with dignity and respect in all places. And no one is entitled to use a position of power to violate those rights,” Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said in a release. “Why can’t some men absorb that simple truth? This is 2021, not 1921. Today, Johnathon Lomeli learned this the hard way.”

During the June incident, Lomeli told a woman, who is unnamed in documents, that he needed to look in her bra for security reasons, according to an affidavit reported by The Associated Press last year. 

He also requested she hold out the waistband of her pants, so he could look down them before saying he needed to detain her and take her to a room for more screening, the woman said. 

The woman said Lomeli directed her “to show me your full breasts” in an elevator and also requested a second look down her pants. She claimed the former TSA agent complimented her breasts before allowing her to leave. 

An FBI spokeswoman said last year that Lomeli was let go from his job at LAX months before his arrest.