Utah: Very Heavy Lifting

Very Heavy Lifting

Stealing three F-16 jet-fighter engines and whisking them out of a military air base is no easy feat. The $2 million Pratt & Whitney machines are 17 ft. long and weigh more than 3,000 lbs. each. But two weeks ago, a military policeman at Utah's Hill Air Force Base towed the mighty machines through an unguarded gate and flogged them to a dealer in military surplus.

Or so he thought. Senior Airman Danny Joe Stroud and his alleged accomplice, Airman 1st Class Brian David Roth, hadn't reckoned on Operation Punchout, a sting that ran a phony purchasing company set up by...

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