Russian Found Guilty of Being Stowaway on Flight to L.A. After Tailgating Passenger

A Russian man has been found guilty of being a stowaway on a plane traveling from Europe to America without any form of documentation or a ticket.

The man, identified as 46-year-old Sergey Ochigava, has a Russian and Israeli passport, according to NBC Los Angeles.

In a press release on Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office Central District of California said he boarded a plane from Denmark to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) without a ticket, passport, or visa in November.

The agency said Ochigava’s crime “carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison.” The news release continued:

According to evidence presented at a three-day trial, on November 3, 2023, Ochigava tailgated an unsuspecting passenger through a security turnstile at Copenhagen Airport in Denmark so that he could enter one of the airport’s terminals without a boarding pass. The next day, he passed through the boarding gate undetected and stowed away aboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight to Los Angeles. During the flight, the cabin crew noticed Ochigava because he moved between multiple unassigned seats.

When the flight landed in Los Angeles on the afternoon of November 4, Ochigava encountered Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the immigration checkpoint at LAX. CBP officers were unable to find any record of Ochigava and discovered that he was not listed as a passenger on that particular Scandinavian Airlines flight or any other incoming international flight. Ochigava was unable to produce a passport, a visa, or other travel document to enter the United States.

The man apparently did not go hungry during his trip, according to an ABC 7 report from December.

An FBI criminal complaint said, “He asked for two meals during each meal service, and at one point attempted to eat the chocolate that belonged to members of the cabin crew”:

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When CBP officers later questioned him, Ochigava gave “false and misleading information about his travel to the United States, including telling CBP that he left his passport on the airplane,” the attorney’s office said.

One social media user who commented on the FBI’s announcement about the guilty verdict said, “Hey, there’s 18 million more that came across our Southern border.”