MIA handyman convicted of attempting Mission Impossible-style theft

A handyman employed at Malta International Airport has been convicted of attempting to steal a number of items from the facility's Lost and Found room.

45-year-old Marco Camilleri had worked at MIA for 25 years as a carpenter and maintenance man, when in July 2015 he had been spotted when two MIA customer care workers, had gone to the Lost and Found room

They testified that when they unlocked and tried to open the door, they found that a heavy object had been placed on the other side to stop it from opening.

They explained that eventually they managed to push the door open just enough for her to slip through. Inside, they saw that a box had been placed to block the door from opening, with a number of items such as mobile phones sprawled on the ground.

The witness had recalled immediately informing her superiors after seeing the accused climbing the shelves to pass through a gap in a part of the soffit that had been removed.

A search of employee lockers found nothing amiss.

Camilleri had claimed to have been trying to retrieve a screwdriver that had gone missing weeks before while he was working on a soffit on the second floor, very close to the room in question.

Using a ladder in the corridor where the Lost and Found room is located, he had entered the room through the soffit in order to locate the tool, and that explained what Curmi had seen.

The box had not been propped up against the inside of the door, Camilleri said, but had just fallen there when he had climbed in the room.

Camilleri, had however failed to explain why he had chosen to use the soffit to access the room as opposed to asking someone to open the door using their set of keys.

Additionally logs of the tasks to which the accused had been assigned showed that it had not been true that he had been working near the Lost and Found room in the weeks before.

The court took into consideration the fact that Camilleri had been found climbing out of the room when he heard the two customer care workers entering and that the box propped up against the door had clearly been placed to block entry from the outside, as well as that objects of a certain value were found spread on the floor as if in preparation to be taken away.

The court noted that standard procedure to access the room in question was to ask customer care workers or security personnel.


Magistrate Audrey Demicoli found him guilty of attempted theft and handed him a 15-month prison sentence, suspended for three years.

Inspector Silvio Magro prosecuted.