Jule Selbo, March 2025

“Stowaway is a minor charge. This is similar to jumping the turnstile…”

 As far as I can tell, this is what happened, and when…

 TUESDAY NOV 26, 2024

 Svetlana Dali, age 57, wearing a pink knit hat and a mask, boarded at Gate B38 the 10 pm flight from New York’s JFK airport to the Paris’s Charles De Gaulle Airport. She spent the 8 hour and 30-minute flight (3,645 miles), moving from bathroom to bathroom. Why? The plane was fully booked, and she did not have a ticket.

She was a stow-away.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2024

Delta Flight 264 lands in Paris. Svetlana was nabbed just before landing by a flight attendant who was checking bathrooms. An Instagram post of a first-class passenger noted: “The sneaky flyer was found when flight attendants noticed her jetting between in-flight lavatories…”

Flight attendants notified French law enforcement, who meet Svetlana at the gate. They determined Svetlana didn’t have a passport or a boarding pass. French authorities placed Dali in detention for entering the country without proper documentation

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27

While Svetlana was held in French custody, multiple investigations were opened to determine how the passenger was able to evade not only the TSA’s passport and boarding pass screeners, but also Delta’s boarding checkpoint at the airline’s terminal without raising any alarms.

TSA, on this day, noted, “This is the only reported case of unauthorized access when over 18 million passengers were screened at TSA security checkpoints during the busiest Thanksgiving travel season ever. No one has ever fully breached the TSA security screening process.”

French authorities refused Svetlana’s mysterious plea for asylum.

SATURDAY,  NOVEMBER 30, 2024

An attempt to fly Svetlana back to NYC on a Delta flight was derailed. Officials said she went “off the rails” with disruptive outbursts while aboard the plane. She was kicked off the flight.

There was another attempt a few days later. That also derailed.

 WEDNESDAY DEC 4, 2024

Svetlana, handcuffed, was flown back to NYC with French and US escorts, and arrested at JFK Airport by FBI agents. She admitted that she had stowed away and intentionally evaded security and Delta employees.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2024

New York Times picks up the story: “…Svetlana Dali, 57, exploited weaknesses in the security system at Kennedy International Airport during the busiest period of the year for air travel by blending in with crowds of boarding travelers. First, she infiltrated a flight crew and passed through a checkpoint with them. Then, she slipped past Delta Air Lines employees, who failed to ask for a boarding pass, and onto a fully booked plane…. Ms. Dali, who is believed to have migrated to the United States from Russia, was arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn on a charge of “secreting aboard a vessel.”

Her public defender lawyer argued that the charge could only be minimal: “Stowaway is a minor charge. This is similar to jumping the turnstile.” Svetlana was released on bail, told she go back to her home in Philadelphia until her court date and was ordered to wear at GPS monitoring device on her ankle.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2024

Svetlana cut off her ankle monitor and was on a bus to Canada when she was arrested again. FBI in Buffalo put her into custody. It was ordered she be held without bail.

MONDAY JANUARY 13, 2025

Svetlana was indicted on a stowaway charge by a grand jury in the Eastern District of New York. She could face five years in prison.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 15, 2025

Svetlana, in a Brooklyn court, pled ‘not guilty’ to a federal stowaway charge.

U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that Svetlana “…scowled during the 20-minute hearing. She walked into court with a limp, wearing a black zip up jacket, a gray sweater, light blue jeans and white boots. Her hair was cut into a severe bob and was dyed platinum blonde…

In a statement included in her filing she claimed that in 2014 she was “…sold for $20,000′ by a Russian Federation minister to be a ‘slave’ to her now ex-husband in America.” She stated that she had filed papers on Pennsylvania to that effect, six days before she boarded Delta 246. She also claimed that “…some time after leaving France she had been poisoned… and that she believed if she stayed at the Manhattan District Court, her life would be in danger’…”

Svetlana’s ex-husband, Mahid Dali (62, an IT specialist, born in Algeria and a US Citizen since 2000), learned on Svetlana’s plight on television. He contacted authorities and did an interview with UK’s Daily Mail, telling them it all started on an internet dating site – he was in Philadelphia, she was in Moscow.

Ten years later (now)  he branded Svetlana ‘a fantasist’ who used him to get a Green Card in the US.  He claimed he was duped into marrying the ‘calculating but delusional’ Russian so she could secure legal residency after the pair hooked up on an internet dating site while she was living in Moscow. (She was given residency and a two-year provisional Green Card under the normal procedure for marriage.)

 Mahid said: “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…We split after three years and then she tried to bury me and take everything. It was one long nightmare.”

According to a federal complaint, Svetlana was able to stroll past Delta agents “busy helping ticketed passengers board. Surveillance video footage captured Svetlana arriving at JFK Terminal 4 at 8:13 pm and getting in line for a Transportation Safety Administration security check. She was turned away when she couldn’t produce a boarding pass — but she wasn’t giving up, the complaint said. At about 8:30 pm, Svetlana got on a special line reserved for employees by blending in with members of a large Air Europa flight crew. The stowaway eventually found herself at a TSA screening line with ticketed passengers and was let through. She then made her way to gate B38 and, shortly after 10 pm, got onto the Delta flight bound for France. Delta agents, who were busy helping ticketed passengers board, did not stop her or ask her to present a boarding pass before she boarded the plane. Once on board, a flight attendant found Svetlana hiding in the airplane bathroom before touching down in Paris.

A check of Svetlana’s social media account includes some bizarre posts in recent years, including a 2021 offer to sell her healthy blood for $1,000 for 10 milliliters during the pandemic. In 2020, she ranted about the fraud in the presidential election and claimed to “have some information about the state criminals on territory in AMERICA.”

Svetlana described herself as self-employed and a former administrative clerk. She claims to have a daughter and grandchild in Moscow and that she had been a real estate attorney in the Russian capital.

Mahid had more details about Svetlana. “(In my apartment), I had a device to enhance the TV signal. When I got back from work, she accused me of spying on her, saying it was a secret camera so I could check on her when I was out. Days later we had a cable company at the apartment. She believed they were the FBI and CIA checking up on her. It was paranoia.” Apparently, Svetlana had told Mahid she has savings that would help the couple buy a house. He said: ‘But when I put my own money for the deposit and arranged the mortgage, she suddenly said she didn’t have it anymore. I thought, that’s a lie. Can I trust her?”

Eventually Mahdi said he had had enough ‘humiliation’ and turbulence, and in 2017 left the three-bedroom marital home he had paid for in a quiet Philadelphia neighborhood.

Svetlana filed domestic abuse allegations against him, which saw him locked up and having to beg a friend for money to bail him out. He told the press he was ‘wrongly convicted’ of the charges and then granted a retrial by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2020 – and since there was no evidence, eventually the case was finally dropped. Mahdi’s word: ‘When Svetlana wants something she just goes for it, not caring who she upsets. She doesn’t calculate the consequences… She’s a liar. She lies all the time. But liars forget the lies they tell. Only the truth remains, and she’s often caught out by that.’

PRESENT DAY, AS OF MARCH 9, 2025

Svetlana is awaiting trial.

Okay. Not sure why I got so interested in the timeline of Svetlana’s case. I kept wondering – is her mind deranged? Is she a spy? Is she a Russian infiltrator? How does this paranoia (if it is paranoia) work? How do people get duped by her?

I guess I thought she was a good character study and about all the ways a story could go using some of these characters.  What if her allegations of persecution are true?  Why would someone be persecuting her? What if her husband is not so innocent? What if there is greater FBI interest in her than these reports state?

The writer’s mind can see possible guilt and possible innocence – oh it’s so easy to muss it all up. ANY STORY TRACK LOOK GOOD FOR YOU?  WHO WOULD YOU MAKE THE PROTAGONIST? WHO IS THE ANTAGONIST.  WHERE IS THE TRUTH?

Sources: NY Times, Daily Mail, Daily News, NY Post, various news programs.