A former Boeing 737 Max test pilot was indicted for fraud on Thursday for deceiving and withholding “critical information” from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group (FAA AEG) the Department of Justice (DOJ) said. A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas indicted Mark A. Forkner, 49, who previously served as Chief Technical Pilot for Boeing, after he deceived federal safety regulators about the 737 Max jetliner in an attempt to save tens of millions of dollars for the airplane manufacturer. According to court documents, Boeing began developing and marketing the 737 MAX in and around June 2011. In a press release from the DOJ, prosecutors accuse Forkner of providing the FAA with “materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information” about a new part of the flight controls for the Boeing 737 MAX called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). MCAS provides consistent airplane handling characteristics in a very specific set of unusual flight conditions, such as when the pilot is …