A Russian man who was convicted of sneaking onto a flight from Denmark to Los Angeles in November without a ticket or passport was neither the first nor the last to attempt such a scheme, a former federal director of LAX security told The Post.
Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava, 46, was convicted last week of following another passenger through Copenhagen airport security, spending the night in a terminal and sneaking onto the plane.
The suspect, who told authorities he worked as an economist, was quickly detained when the plane landed in Los Angeles after officials discovered he did not have a passport and was not listed on the passenger manifest.
He told the feds he didn’t remember how he had violated multiple levels of security and checks and balances before flying 9,000 miles across international borders.
Keith Jeffries, who served as director of the US Department of Homeland Security from 2016 to 2022 and currently serves as vice president of K2 Security Screening Group, speculated that Ochigava took his time and waited for the right moments before taking his blatant measures.
“What happens is a lot of people just watch and watch and see what’s going on, they blend into the crowd, depending on how busy it is, the security check, they may go through the ticket document checker,” Jeffries said.
“The good news is that they are tested. “The aviation process consists of layers and if one layer fails, such as when they go through the ticket document checker, they will be examined at the checkpoint to make sure they do not have any prohibited items.”
Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava, 46, was found guilty after sneaking aboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen to LAX. @ostorozhno_novosti / Telegram
Once through security, Ochigava clearly foreshadowed his time before sneaking onto Scandinavian Airlines Flight 931 undetected, leading the former TSA chief to compare him to an infamous American woman who had boarded planes without credentials dozens of times. times over the last few decades.
“So the next step is, if they don’t have a boarding pass, like Mr. Ochigava and Marilyn Hartman in the past, they will go to a particular gate and look and observe, and depending on the boarding process, If they can pass the agent who checks the passes while boarding, they can get on a plane.”
Once aboard the flight, which was not completely full, Ochigava switched between unoccupied seats several times and chatted with passengers and crew, whom he convinced to give him double portions of food, prosecutors said.
He even tried to eat a cabin crew member’s chocolate bar, according to court documents.
His charismatic fidgeting could have been an additional tactic to charm the flight attendants and avoid exposure for his pre-takeoff count, Jeffries said.
“Let’s say that layer fails, which appears to have happened in this case, while that plane is in the air, Customs and Border Protection, they have a flight manifest. They know who is in the air coming to the United States and they have to go through customs.
He told the feds he didn’t remember how he had violated multiple levels of security and checks and balances before flying 9,000 miles across international borders. Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
“And at that moment, obviously that cape trapped this guy.”
Ochigava, who faces five years in federal prison, was found to be carrying what “appeared to be Russian identification cards and an Israeli identification card,” although authorities said he is not Israeli.
The man falsely claimed to have left his U.S. passport on the plane and showed agents a photograph of part of a passport that showed his name, date of birth and identification number, but did not include any photographs.
Ochigava was quickly detained after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport on November 4. AP
He “didn’t remember how he got on the plane in Copenhagen. Ochigava also did not explain how or when he arrived in Copenhagen or what he was doing there,” an affidavit states.
However, the stowaway appeared to have been wandering around Europe without credentials for some time before heading to the United States. He showed officials the most recent photos on his phone, which included a screenshot of a map showing the location of a shelter in Kiel, Germany, and a map of an unknown city, prosecutors said.
Ochigava’s motives were not immediately clear, but Jeffries had seen his apparent methods “over and over again,” and noted that many stowaways are smart and determined.
“I vividly remember a homeless person getting a boarding pass and trying to get to a checkpoint,” the security expert said of his time at LAX.
Ochigava’s motives were not immediately clear. Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
“They pick up boarding passes at a kiosk, if someone prints an extra boarding pass, they don’t have an ID, but they try to use that boarding pass to try to get into a checkpoint and sometimes they will break through,” Jefferies added .
“Occasionally, they were not very frequent, but we had people who avoided going through the checkpoint to be screened and then tried to board a plane,” he said, adding that, as far as he knew, no one snuck onto a plane in LAX under your watch.
Officials are now embarking on a “very detailed” investigation to determine how exactly Ochigava pulled it off and who should be held responsible, Jeffries said, adding that the investigation’s findings would not be made public.
Copenhagen Airport confirmed this after the Nov. 3 breach, saying in a statement that it had “provided photographic and video material to the authorities investigating the case.”
Jeffries warned that stowaways would still try to breach security and fly for free, and would sometimes succeed, but said there would be “fewer opportunities” for them as biometrics became more prevalent in airport security.
“He’s not the first and he won’t be the last.”
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn