El Paso, TX City Rep Rachel Quintana is in trouble – she’s currently under investigation for forgery, using an old ID card from her previous employment at FedEx to purchase a discounted ticket on Southwest Airlines. Several El Paso city officials believe that Quintana’s integrity has been severely challenged due to this incident – while some see it as a political stunt. Either way, Quintana used an ID card belonging to FedEx to purchase a ticket from Texas to California nearly one month after she left the company.

FedEx employees receive a special discounted rate from Southwest, a practice that is common among many airlines. When purchasing tickets at this special rate, employees must present two pieces of identification verifying their employment – ID cards that are supposed to be given back to FedEx when leaving the company. Quintana surrendered that badge, but kept an access control card issued by the airport used by employees to enter and exit for normal working purposes. Quintana presented this and a letter on FedEx letterhead stating that she was a current employee. Suspicious of her actions, the Southwest ticket agent called FedEx to double check the validity of the letter and made Quintana pay the difference between the ticket prices before her return flight. Quintana has been under investigation since, and although some El Paso politicians believe this is a politically motivated scandal, Quintana’s actions bring up important issues about corporate employee ID cards.
An ID card is only as good as the policy that stands behind it. We’ve reported before about unscrupulous employees keeping their ID cards after leaving their jobs and this is no exception – ID cards, especially those enabled with access control, can lead to internalized theft, fraud, or in Quintana’s case, attempted forgery. Wider knowledge of FedEx policy and better training, cornerstones of any good ID card program, could have kept Quintana’s airport badge from slipping through the cracks.