Sometimes, you hear about a guy who you have to give credit for chutzpah, but not brains. This is one such: It seems that last November 4th, a Russian named Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava found a new definition of "discount travel" when he tailgated another passenger through a security turnstile at the Copenhagen airport, then snuck onto a Scandinavian Airlines flight to Los Angeles. The whole affair didn't work out like we can presume Sergey hoped; he was arrested at LAX and now, has been convicted of being a stowaway.

Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Nov. 4 via Scandinavian Airlines flight 931 from Copenhagen. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer could not find Ochigava on the flight’s manifest or any other incoming international flights, according to a complaint filed Nov. 6 in Los Angeles federal court.

After a three-day trial, the court’s jury found Ochigava, 46, guilty of one count of being a stowaway on an aircraft. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison when he is sentenced Feb. 5, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

Prosecutors presented evidence at the trial that showed Ochigava entered a terminal at Copenhagen Airport in Denmark without a boarding pass by tailgating an unsuspecting passenger through a security turnstile. The next day, he boarded the plane undetected, prosecutors said. 

So, he spent the night in Copenhagen Airport? Doing what, one wonders? His actions on the airplane lend more evidence that Sergey isn't really on the up-and-up, as if we didn't know that already.

The flight crew told investigators that during the flight’s departure, Ochigava was in a seat that was supposed to be unoccupied. After departure, he kept wandering around the plane, switching seats and trying to talk to other passengers, who ignored him, according to the complaint.

He also ate “two meals during each meal service, and at one point attempted to eat the chocolate that belonged to members of the cabin crew,” the complaint said.

Customs and Border Protection officers searched his bag and found what “appeared to be Russian identification cards and an Israeli identification card,” federal officials said in court documents. They also found in his phone a photograph that partially showed a passport containing his name, date of birth and a passport number but not his photograph, they said.

There is a line in the movie "True Lies" that would seem to apply here:

"Ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy."

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It's mildly amazing that Sergey Ochigava got as far as he did; there would seem to have been a cavalcade of errors, beginning with someone at the security checkpoint not paying attention, and the flight crew evidently not noticing the extraneous passenger until they were well on their way; otherwise, one would expect they would have turned around or diverted to a closer airport. But at least our Russian stowaway was caught and faces the prospect now of time behind federal crowbars. And, yes, Gospodin Ochigava is a suspicious character all right; the duplicate identity cards and the passport photo (but lack of an actual passport) sure present a picture of a guy who is up to no good.

It's a good thing he only stowed away on a commercial aircraft, instead of, say, a Mars lander. While that may have been tempting, just out of Curiosity, but probably wouldn't have ended well.

Speaking of unorthodox travel arrangements, I recently heard a rumor that the federal government is proposing to tax hitchhiking. They're calling it a thumbtax.