Jury convicts New York-Paris flight stowaway who slipped past gate agents
NEW YORK (AP) — A jury on Thursday convicted a woman who sneaked onto a flight from New York to Paris without a boarding pass by slipping past security and airline gate agents at John F. Kennedy International Airport last year.
The short trial of Svetlana Dali concluded with a guilty finding on a stowaway charge by jurors in federal court in Brooklyn. Jury selection and opening statements were both held on Tuesday, and Dali took the stand on Wednesday.
The judge did not immediately set a sentencing date. Dali faces up to six months in prison, according to her sentencing guidelines. To date, she has been in custody for more than five months.
Dali's lawyer, Michael Schneider, declined to comment to The Associated Press following the verdict.
Surveillance video shows Dali, a 57-year-old Russian citizen with U.S. residency, glomming onto a group of ticketed passengers as they pass two Delta Air Lines staffers who were checking tickets and didn't appear to notice Dali. She then strolls with the group onto an air bridge to a plane bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
In court, Dali said she walked onto the plane without being asked for a boarding pass, though acknowledged she did not have one.
Prosecutors said Dali had initially been turned away from a security checkpoint at JFK by a Transportation Security Administration official after she was unable to show a boarding pass. But she was able to join a special security lane for airline employees and, masked by a large Air Europa flight crew, made it to an area where she was screened and patted down. Then she went to the Delta gate.
On the plane, prosecutors say she hid in a bathroom for several hours and wasn't discovered by Delta crew members until the plane was nearing Paris. Dali told the court she went in there because she was feeling sick.
Crew members notified French authorities, who detained her before she entered customs at the Paris airport, according to court documents.
She was eventually flown back to New York. During two hours of questioning by an FBI agent, Dali said she flew to France because she had to the leave the U.S., where she said police refused to protect her from people who were poisoning her, according to court documents.
Dali was initially released after her arrest with electric monitoring. But she then was arrested again in Buffalo, New York, after she cut off the monitor and tried to enter Canada.
Prosecutors said Dali evaded security measures at two other airports before the JFK incident, and they believe she may have stowed away on another flight.
Two days before she sneaked on the Paris flight, she was able to get through TSA, identification and boarding pass checkpoints at Bradley International Airport near Hartford, Connecticut, by hiding among other passengers. Authorities said she unsuccessfully tried to get on a plane and then left the airport.
In February 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents discovered Dali hiding in a bathroom at Miami International Airport, prosecutors said. Dali, who was found in a secured area in the international arrivals zone, was fingerprinted, her baggage was checked and she was escorted out of the airport, after the agents couldn't confirm her story that she had just arrived on an Air France flight and was waiting for her husband, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said federal agents did not make any findings that Dali had illegally traveled as a stowaway to Miami, but her statements to law enforcement after her arrest in Paris appeared to indicate that she had flown into Miami illegally. Dali told authorities that she returned to the U.S. in February 2024 after spending time in Europe, but there were no records of her being admitted to the U.S. within the past five years.
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