Russian man faces 5 years in jail for flying on Denmark-Los Angeles plane without passport or ticket

Prosecutors presented evidence at the trial that showed Ochigava entered a terminal at Copenhagen airport in Denmark without a boarding pass by tailgating an unsuspecting passenger through a security turnstile. The next day, he boarded the plane undetected, prosecutors said.

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The flight crew told investigators that during the flight’s departure, Ochigava was in a seat that was supposed to be unoccupied. After departure, he kept wandering around the plane, switching seats and trying to talk to other passengers, who ignored him, according to the complaint.

He also 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 complaint said.

Customs and Border Protection officers searched his bag and found what “appeared to be Russian identification cards and an Israeli identification card,” federal officials said in court documents. They also found in his phone a photograph that partially showed a passport containing his name, date of birth and a passport number but not his photograph, they said.

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 aeroplane,” according to the complaint, which said he “claimed he had not been sleeping for three days and did not understand what was going on.”