Woman who stowed away on New York-Paris flight reportedly arrested trying to flee U.S.

Russian national Svetlana Dali, 57, previously arrested and accused of flying from New York to Paris as a stowaway on Nov. 26, was arrested Monday after purportedly trying to leave the U.S. again.

Ms. Dali was sent from France back to the United States and arrested earlier this month after successfully avoiding two prior attempts to send her stateside.

At a bail hearing on Dec. 5, she was ordered to agree to electronic monitoring and stay at the Philadelphia residence of a church acquaintance under curfew, the Associated Press reported.

Ms. Dali is accused of cutting off her electronic monitor and traveling to upstate New York in the hopes of hopping on a bus and crossing into Canada, unnamed law enforcement sources told the New York Times. Unlike the France-bound Delta flight she boarded last month, Ms. Dali did have a ticket for the bus.

Ms. Dali was apprehended Monday in Buffalo aboard the bus after failing to produce a passport, and was then taken into custody once officials determined she had an open arrest warrant on bail-jumping charges, according to ABC News.

Ms. Dali had also been turned away in France, where she was not allowed through customs, due to a lack of a travel visa.

In a criminal complaint, U.S. law enforcement said that Ms. Dali got past the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint without any restricted items by joining an Air Europa flight crew and going through a special line for employees at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

She was then able to board Delta Air Lines flight 264 to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport without presenting a boarding pass due to what Delta called in a statement a “deviation from standard procedures.”

Just days before her first attempt to leave the U.S. where she is a legal resident, Ms. Dali filed a lawsuit in federal court against her ex-husband, the FBI, the Pennsylvania State Police and other plaintiffs.

Ms. Dali alleged that she was sold to her ex-husband Mahdi Dali by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for $20,000 for the purposes of a game.

Mr. Dali called her a “fantasist” and said that she used him to get legal status inside the U.S.

“I was a good target for her. I was scammed. All she wanted was to live in America and I was naïve enough to fall for it,” Mr. Dali told the Daily Mail.