Last November, a Russian man who boarded a flight from Denmark to Los Angeles without a ticket, passport or visa was found guilty in US federal court as an air stowaway.
Sergei Ochigaba, 46, was found guilty by a California jury on Friday.
Authorities arrested Ochigaba at the Los Angeles airport because they could find no record of him boarding a plane or applying for a visa.
He has been in custody since November and could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
Prosecutors said Ochigaba tailgated a passenger through the ticket gates at Denmark’s Copenhagen Airport and passed through security without a boarding pass.
The next day, he passed through the gate unnoticed and boarded a Scandinavian Airlines flight to Los Angeles.
According to Ochigaba’s indictment, a flight attendant noticed him moving between several unassigned seats on the plane.
He also “requested two meals per meal service and at one point attempted to eat chocolate that belonged to a flight attendant.”
“He was trying to talk to other passengers on the plane, but most of them ignored him,” one flight attendant said.
When the plane landed in Los Angeles on Nov. 4, Ochigaba was greeted by U.S. border officials. Agents could not find any official record of him on the Scandinavian Airlines flight or any other flight.
They also failed to provide visas, passports, and other travel documents needed to enter the United States. After searching his bag, authorities found both Russian and Israeli ID cards in his possession.
Authorities accused him of giving “false and misleading information about his travels to the United States,” including first telling Border Patrol agents that he had forgotten his passport on the plane.
“I may have had a ticket, but I wasn’t sure,” Ochigaba told a Border Patrol agent, according to the indictment.
He also claimed that he did not remember how he got on the plane and that he had not slept for three days.
Ochigaba is scheduled to be formally sentenced on February 5th.