BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — A Russian woman who had been living in Philadelphia accused of trying to stow away on a flight from New York to Paris last month has been arrested again — this time in Buffalo.
Svetlana Dali, who was brought back to New York City to face charges, allegedly cut off the ankle monitor she was required to be wearing while awaiting trial and then wound up on a Greyhound bus headed to Canada, prosecutors said in federal court in Buffalo Tuesday.
She was arrested in Buffalo when she apparently could not produce her passport, sources told ABC News.
Dali appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Roemer for the alleged violation of her pre-trial release conditions. She was wearing an orange jail hoodie sweatshirt and a white face mask.
Dali, 57, seemed agitated and refused to be represented by the attorney assigned to her.
She insisted on making statements, even as the judge and the attorney repeatedly told her that they could be used against her.
"I want to make statement," she said.
She claimed that she was the victim of human trafficking and had been sold as a slave. She also said she had been repeatedly poisoned.
The judge eventually stopped her from speaking and ruled that she was a flight risk and would be remanded. Roemer told prosecutors to arrange to have her transported to Brooklyn to face the charges on the stowaway case.
According to court documents, Dali managed to board Delta flight 264 from John J. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France on November 26.
Federal authorities said she did not have a boarding pass for the nighttime flight. According to the FBI, she was initially turned away at a TSA checkpoint for not having a boarding pass but then returned and entered "through a special lane for airline employees" with a large group of airline crew members.
She was then able to get to the gate where she boarded the plane without a boarding pass, "Delta agents, who were busy helping ticketed passengers aboard, did not stop her or ask her to present a boarding pass before she boarded the plane."
The plane had already departed when the flight crew realized that Dali wasn't supposed to be on the plane. French authorities were notified and she was detained at the gate when the plane landed in Paris.
She was returned to the U.S. on December 4 at which point a judge released her on the ankle monitor.
