Man who flew from Europe to US without ticket or passport facing five years in prison

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A Russian man who flew from Denmark to the west coast of the USA in November without a passport or ticket has been discovered responsible of being a stowaway on an plane.

Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on 4 November on Scandinavian Airlines flight 931 from Copenhagen.

In a case that baffled officers, US Customs and Border Protection officers couldn’t discover Ochigava on the flight’s manifest or every other incoming worldwide flights, in accordance to a criticism filed on 6 November in Los Angeles federal courtroom.

At the time, a spokesperson for Copenhagen Airport advised The Independent {that a} man may very well be seen getting into without a sound ticket and that it “provided photo and video material to the authorities who are investigating the case”.

After a three-day trial, a jury discovered Ochigava, 46, responsible of 1 rely of being a stowaway on an plane. He faces a most sentence of five years in federal prison when he’s sentenced on 5 February, the US Department of Justice mentioned in an announcement.

Prosecutors offered proof on the trial that confirmed Ochigava entered a terminal at Copenhagen Airport in Denmark without a boarding cross by tailgating an unsuspecting passenger via a safety turnstile. The subsequent day, he boarded the aircraft undetected, prosecutors mentioned.

The flight crew advised investigators that throughout the flight’s departure, Ochigava was in a seat that was supposed to be unoccupied. After departure, he stored wandering across the aircraft, switching seats and attempting to speak to different passengers, who ignored him, in accordance to the criticism.

He additionally ate “two meals during each meal service, and at one point attempted to eat the chocolate that belonged to members of the cabin crew,” the criticism mentioned.

Customs and Border Protection officers searched his bag and located what “appeared to be Russian identification cards and an Israeli identification card,” federal officers mentioned in courtroom paperwork. They additionally discovered in his cellphone {a photograph} that partially confirmed a passport containing his title, date of delivery and a passport quantity however not his {photograph}, they mentioned.

Ochigava “gave false and misleading information about his travel to the United States, including initially telling CBP that he left his US passport on the airplane,” in accordance to the criticism, which mentioned he “claimed he had not been sleeping for three days and did not understand what was going on.”

Additonal reporting by Associated Press.