Svetlana Dali, previously convicted of sneaking onto a flight to Paris in 2024 was arrested after landing in Milan Thursday.
An unnamed law enforcement source told CNN that Dali successfully snuck past United Airlines employees at Newark Liberty International Airport Wednesday to board United Airlines Flight 19 to Italy.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that Dali was arrested at Milan’s Malpensa Airport.
FBI spokesperson Emily Molinari told the AP that the agency was working with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the Newark airport, on the “open investigation” into Dali’s latest alleged stowaway incident.
“Safety and security are our highest priorities. We are investigating this incident and working with the appropriate authorities,” United Airlines said, according to CNN.
Dali, a Russian national and American legal resident, was convicted in May 2025 for sneaking onto a Delta Air Lines flight to Paris at John F. Kennedy International Airport in November 2024. She walked with a group of Air Europe employees to get past TSA before walking close to a group of other passengers to make it onto the plane.
In July 2025, a federal judge sentenced Dali to time served on one felony count of being a stowaway, with one year of supervised release.
The supervised release stipulates that she has to abide by instructions from immigration authorities, cannot reenter the U.S. illegally and must “undergo a mental health evaluation, and if deemed necessary, the defendant shall participate in a treatment program approved by the United States Probation Department,” according to court documents.
On her way to Paris in 2024, Dali told a flight attendant that she was going to try to get asylum there because, she said, both the U.S. and Russian governments were trying to poison her with the radioactive element polonium. She was subsequently sent back to the U.S. after France rejected her asylum claim.
Dali is also accused of trying to board a plane at Connecticut’s Bradley Airport without a boarding pass just days before her successful stowaway attempt at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Though she was due to be arrested for the Bradley Airport attempt after her July sentencing, Connecticut State Police failed to retrieve her and she was released from federal custody, according to the New York Daily News.
