A Toronto flight attendant is accused of using fake identification to get free flights for years
Brazen if true. But have you seen the cost of air travel lately?
Many of us obsessively strategize on how to play the airline rewards game—flying is expensive, and paying with diligently gathered points feels like winning a skills-based competition.
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline took his scheming to the next level and has now pleaded not guilty after being indicted on wire fraud charges.
Related: Another suspect has been arrested in connection to the $20-million Pearson gold heist
According to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press, Dallas Pokornik of Toronto obtained hundreds of tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants using fake employee identification.
Pokornik worked for a Canadian airline from 2017 to 2019. Prosecutors said his flight scheme went on for four years and that he went so far as to ask to sit in the cockpit’s jump seat, a space usually reserved for off-duty pilots. (It is not clear whether his request was granted.)
He will remain in custody—the judge has probably seen Catch Me If You Can.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
