FBI agents arrested Nigerian man Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi Wednesday after he attempted to board a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta after having already flown from New York to Los Angeles using an old boarding pass in someone else’s name.
Noibi began his journey on June 24 at JFK International Airport in New York, where he was able to clear TSA security using not only a Virgin America boarding pass with someone else’s name on it, but also by supplementing that with a student ID card (not valid identification according the TSA’s website) from the University of Michigan in his name. Agents were apparently not alarmed by the name discrepancy nor did they notice that the boarding pass Noibi used was for a Virgin America flight the day before.
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While Noibi was on the Virgin America flight to Los Angeles, a flight attendant noticed that he was sitting in a seat that was supposed to be empty. When approached, Noibi showed flight crew the boarding pass in question and his student ID. The crew alerted authorities in Los Angeles and monitored Noibi for the remainder of the flight. Upon arrival at LAX, Noibi was taken into custody and questioned. “He wasn’t arrested at that time,” Los Angeles FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told MSNBC. “Beyond traveling without a ticket, there was no immediate threat.”
But Noibi’s boldness didn’t stop there. After the FBI let him go, he was caught attempting to board a flight to Atlanta on June 29 using another invalid ticket. When Noibi was again detained, the FBI found that he was carrying 10 other expired boarding passes belonging to others. Noibi says he found the boarding pass he used to fly from New York to Los Angeles, which seems to correspond with the story from the man whose name was on the pass. The rightful owner of the ticket said that he lost the pass when he was on his way to the airport for the June 23 flight.
It was also later uncovered that Noibi is not a current student at the University of Michigan but was enrolled as an engineering student there between 2004 and 2006. Noibi was charged with being a stowaway and could receive up to five years in prison if convicted.
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