How did Sergei Vladimirovich Ochigawa sneak onto the plane?

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by jesse o’neil

The Russian man convicted of sneaking onto a flight from Denmark to Los Angeles without a ticket or passport in November was neither the first nor the last to attempt such a plot, said a former federal security guard at LAX. the director told the Post.

Sergei Vladimirovich Ochigawa, 46, was found guilty last week of passing through security at Copenhagen Airport, following another flyer, staying overnight in the terminal and sneaking onto a plane.

The suspect, who told authorities he worked as an economist, was taken into custody shortly after the plane landed in Los Angeles after authorities discovered he did not have a passport and was not listed on the passenger list. .

He told federal authorities he did not remember how he breached multiple levels of security and checks and balances before flying 9,000 miles across the border.

Keith Jeffries, who served as director of the Department of Homeland Security from 2016 to 2022 and is currently vice president of K2 Security Screening Group, said Ochigaba took his time and waited for the right moment before making the brazen move. I surmised that he had taken action.

“What happens is that a lot of people just watch and observe, and depending on the crowd, they blend in with the crowd, go through the security checkpoint, and get through the ticket document machine,” Jeffrey said. Zu said.

“The good news is they are being screened. The aviation process is tiered and if one tier fails, such as passing the ticket document checker, they are checked for prohibited items. You will be tested at a checkpoint to see if this is the case.”

Mr. Ochigaba showed clear signs of being on the move by passing through security and sneaking onto Scandinavian Airlines Flight 931 undetected, leading the former TSA chief to disqualify him dozens of times over the past few decades. He compared it to the infamous American woman who boarded the plane.

“The next step is that if you don’t have a boarding pass, like Mr. Ochigaba and Marilyn Hartman did at the time, the ticketing agent will go to a specific gate and monitor it and, based on the boarding process, check the pass while boarding. If you can get through it, you can get on the plane.”

When he boarded a plane that wasn’t completely full, prosecutors said Ochigaba would repeatedly switch between empty seats, chat with passengers and crew, and cleverly double the amount of food on the flight.

According to court documents, he also tried to snack on a flight attendant’s chocolate bar.

His charismatic restlessness may have been a further strategy to charm flight attendants and avoid exposure due to pre-takeoff numbers, Jeffries said.

“Suppose that layer fails. In this case, it looks like that plane failed mid-flight. Customs and Border Protection has the flight manifest. They know who’s coming to the United States, and they It has to go through customs.

“And at that point, obviously that demographic grabbed this guy.”

Mr. Ochigaba, who is facing a five-year sentence in federal prison, was found to be in possession of “what appeared to be Russian identification and Israeli identification,” although officials said he was not an Israeli. He said he was not a person.

The man falsely claimed to have left his U.S. passport on the plane and showed the agent a photo of a portion of his passport that contained his name, date of birth, and identification number, but no photo.

He “does not remember how he got on the plane in Copenhagen. Mr. Ochigaba also did not explain when or how he arrived in Copenhagen or what he was doing there,” the affidavit said. It is stated in

However, the stowaway appears to have been running around Europe without credentials for some time before heading to the United States. Prosecutors said the suspect showed staff the latest photos on his phone, including a screenshot of a map showing the location of a hostel in Kiel, Germany, and a screenshot of a map of an unknown city. It also included a map of

Mr. Ochigaba’s motives were not immediately clear, but Mr. Jeffries said he had witnessed his apparent tactics “many times” and noted that many of the stowaways were smart and decisive.

“I vividly remember a homeless person trying to get a boarding pass and go to a checkpoint,” the security expert said of his time at LAX.

“They receive a boarding pass from a kiosk. If someone prints an additional boarding pass, they may try to use that boarding pass to enter the checkpoint even though they don’t have ID. We’re going to do well,” Jeffries added.

“Sometimes, although not very often, people would try to bypass the checkpoint and get tested before boarding the plane,” he said, adding that as far as he knew, no one had. He snuck onto a plane at LAX under his watch.

Jeffries said authorities are now embarking on a “very detailed” investigation to determine how exactly Ochigaba carried out the incident and who is responsible. It added that the results of the investigation will not be made public.

Copenhagen Airport acknowledged the same fact after the November 3 violation, saying in a statement that it had “provided photographic and video material to the authorities investigating the incident.”

Mr Jeffries warned that stowaways would continue to try and, in some cases, succeed in breaking through security to board a plane for free, but that as biometrics became more widespread in airport security, there would be “opportunities” for stowaways. “There will be fewer,” he said.

“He’s not the first, and he’s not going to be the last.”