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No, it’s not a scene from the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can, where Leonardo DiCaprio poses as a pilot to defraud an airline, but it might seem familiar.
On Tuesday, the U.S Attorney General’s Office for the District of Hawaii said that a Toronto man is accused of posing as a commercial pilot for four years, using a fake employee ID to take hundreds of free flights on three different airlines.
Dallas Pokornik, 33, a former flight attendant, requested a jump seat in the cockpit for the flights, the office claimed, citing court records. A jump seat is an extra seat in the cockpit typically reserved for off-duty pilots.
Pokornik was arrested in Panama in January after being indicted for wire fraud on Oct. 2, 2025, authorities said. He pleaded not guilty Tuesday following his extradition, according to The Associated Press.
According to court documents, Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then later used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other airlines.
The court documents says Pokornik falsely claimed he was still an employee of the Toronto-based airline, “which he in fact knew to be fraudulent at the time it was so presented.”
CBC News reached out to Air Canada, Porter Airlines, Sunwing and WestJet for comment, although of those airlines only Porter and Sunwing have Toronto headquarters. Air Canada is based out of Montreal and WestJet is based in Calgary.
“We have no record of a person by this name having worked for our carrier,” an Air Canada spokesperson told CBC News.
Porter Airlines, Sunwing and WestJet have yet to respond.
Faces 20 years in prison
The three airlines Pokornik flew for free with are based in Honolulu, Chicago, and Fort Worth, Texas, according to the court documents.
Representatives for Hawaiian Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines — which are respectively based in those cities — didn’t immediately respond to request for comment, according to The Associated Press.
If convicted, Pokornik faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 US, plus a term of supervised release.
CBC News reached out to a public defender listed as Pokornik’s lawyer in court documents, but hasn’t yet heard back.
As the federal government eases restrictions on the amount of flights from the Middle East, experts say Canadian airlines may face pressure to upgrade their planes and service level to stay competitive.
Last June, a Florida man was found guilty of posing as a flight attendant to obtain more than 120 free flights over six years.
According to a press release from the U.S. District Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, Tiron Alexander, 35, booked free flights on an airline carrier’s website that were only available to pilots and flight attendants.
He did this by posing as a flight attendant who worked for other airlines, according to the attorney’s office. He also posed as a flight attendant on three other airline carriers, the news release notes.
