She will always have Paris.
A federal jury in Brooklyn convicted a Russian woman on Thursday for sneaking onto a flight headed to Paris from JFK Airport.
Svetlana Dali, 57, was found guilty after about an hour of deliberation following a three-day trial where she notably decided to testify in her own defense.
Her sentence could range from 0 to 6 months based on federal guidelines.
Dali had been detained for over five months since she managed to board a plane to France at Queens Airport.
On November 26, 2024, she navigated various security checkpoints before getting onto a Delta flight.
A Russian citizen with a U.S. green card, Dali was trying to fly to Paris for free. After passing through the TSA checkpoint, she blended in with the Aeroy Par flight crew line before shifting to the Delta boarding queue.
During the seven-and-a-half-hour flight, she reportedly spent most of her time in the bathroom, claiming to be unwell, until a flight attendant insisted she return to her seat upon landing.
Once the plane landed, French authorities received her and sent her back to the U.S.
She was later arrested in Brooklyn in January after removing an ankle monitor and attempting to board a Greyhound bus to Canada.
The jury viewed footage showing Dali illegally boarding the aircraft, and it was acknowledged that she later admitted to a federal agent she was aware of her wrongdoing.
Dali’s defense argued that she didn’t understand she needed to show her passport and boarding pass. Her attorney, Michael Schneider, urged the judge to consider her lack of knowledge.
“It’s fair to say,” he stated, “she may not have realized she needed a boarding pass… because she simply didn’t.”
Dali testified that she was “throwing up blood” during the flight, explaining her frequent trips to the bathroom.
“I couldn’t keep track of time or even look at the clock,” she said.
Prosecutors pointed out that Dali had attempted to evade airport security on two prior occasions—once at Miami International last February and again at Bradley International in Connecticut, just two days before her JFK incident in November.
“This wasn’t her first time bypassing airport security,” stated U.S. Attorney Assistant Brooke Theodora in court.
Dali also mentioned to flight attendants that both the U.S. and Russian governments were poisoning her with radioactive polonium, asserting that she sought asylum in Paris.
The judge has yet to set a date for her sentencing, but it is anticipated to happen sometime next week.
