Ventura Man Arrested on Federal Grand Jury Indictment Alleging Fraudulent Representations Regarding Helicopter Parts

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LOS ANGELES – A Ventura County man was arrested today on a 10-count federal grand jury indictment alleging his company and he defrauded customers by misleading them as to the nature of helicopter parts, making the customers believe that the parts had fewer service hours than they in fact had.

Jared Michael Swensen, 48, of Ventura, is expected to make his initial appearance and be arraigned on the indictment this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.

Also charged in the indictment is Swensen’s Oxnard-based company, J&J Enterprises LLLP, which did business as “Light Helicopter Depot.” Both Swensen and his company are charged with two counts of wire fraud and eight counts of fraud involving aircraft parts.

According to the indictment that a federal grand jury returned on April 10, Swensen and Light Helicopter solicited and accepted work to overhaul and maintain helicopters. In performing the overhaul work, the defendants were expected to remove helicopter parts that had reached or were approaching their life limit and to replace them with new parts, parts that had just been overhauled or parts that had substantially fewer hours in service.

After removing helicopter parts – including main rotor blades and main rotor spindles – that were substantially used or near their life limit, the defendants allegedly installed older, not overhauled parts that in some cases were closer to their life limit than they represented. If these parts failed, a helicopter likely would crash.

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 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 and Light Helicopter then sent invoices and received payments in connection with this work. The indictment alleges two such fraudulently induced payments from customers in February and May of 2023.

The indictment further alleges the defendants made a series of fraudulent representations related to helicopter parts that involved false writings, entries, and records from April 2020 to August 2023.

An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

If convicted, Swensen would face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count of wire fraud and up to 15 years in federal prison for each count of fraud involving aircraft parts. Light Helicopter Depot, if convicted, would be fined up to $10 million for each aircraft parts fraud count and up to $1 million for each wire fraud count.

The United States Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General is investigating this matter. The FAA provided assistance.

Assistant United States Attorneys Dennis Mitchell and Danbee Kim of the Environmental Crimes and Consumer Protection Section are prosecuting this case.