The girl who snuck aboard a Delta jet from New York Metropolis to Paris final yr allegedly tried the identical trick two days earlier at Connecticut’s Bradley Worldwide Airport, in keeping with court docket paperwork.
Svetlana Dali, 57, is jailed in New York on a federal stowaway cost pending a Might 19 trial. She has pleaded not responsible, and her protection attorneys are reportedly engaged on a plea deal.
Dali was first arrested in Paris in November after mixing in with different passengers and flight crew members to slide previous gate brokers and board the Delta flight sans boarding cross or another journey paperwork.
Nonetheless, that was not Dali’s first rodeo, in keeping with a memorandum filed this week in Brooklyn federal court docket. She had allegedly tried to slide by means of safety at Bradley Worldwide Airport in Connecticut’s Hartford County simply 48 hours earlier than efficiently doing so at JFK, and had tried the identical at Miami Worldwide Airport again in February 2024.
At Bradley, Dali was seen on surveillance video twice making an attempt to enter TSA safety checkpoints and not using a boarding cross, prosecutors mentioned. The primary time she was thwarted, however the second time she made it by means of, carrying the identical boots and toting the identical backpack as she had at JFK.
“Although there is no evidence that the defendant boarded or traveled on a flight illegally from BDL, the BDL security footage shows that the defendant bypassed BDL security checkpoints in a manner that is strikingly similar to her conduct at JFK and MIA,” prosecutors mentioned.
To take action, she allegedly hid amongst passengers whereas employees was vetting different individuals, camouflaged her approach by means of safety and hid within the rest room. She additionally obtained in line for a home JetBlue flight however didn’t make it onto the aircraft, prosecutors mentioned.
In Miami, Dali was discovered within the airport’s safe worldwide arrivals zone previous U.S. Customs. Whereas she claimed that she had simply arrived through Air France and was ready for her husband, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent who questioned her mentioned he “could not find any records of the defendant on an Air France flight that day, and that there were no records of the defendant leaving the United States for approximately the last five years,” the court docket data state.
Prosecutors argue that Dali’s prior conduct ought to be admissible as proof as a result of it “shows that the defendant’s actions at JFK were methodically planned based on her past experience” and had been “deliberately and intentionally designed to obtain air transportation without consent.”
Dali was detained in November after touching down in Paris and despatched again to the U.S. to face federal expenses of being a stowaway on a vessel or plane with out consent.
Initially launched on the situation she avoid airports and undergo GPS monitoring, the Russian nationwide and U.S. everlasting resident was arrested once more just a few weeks later after lopping off her ankle bracelet and making an attempt to cross into Canada by Greyhound bus. She has been jailed with out bail ever since.
A conviction may carry a five-year jail sentence.
