Man Pleads Guilty in Miami Federal Court to Acting as Russian Agent

DOJ Press

Miami, Florida – Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, 36, a Mexican citizen who had resided in Singapore, has pled guilty to acting within the United States on behalf of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General.

Fuentes is Mexican citizen who has spent significant time in Russia.  According to court documents, since 2019, Fuentes acted under the direction and control of someone he believed to be a Russian government official.  Instructed by this Russian official, Fuentes arranged for an intermediary to lease a unit in a residential building in Miami-Dade County where a U.S. person, who had previously provided information about the Russian government to the United States Government, resided.

Furthermore, at the direction of the same Russian official, Fuentes traveled to Miami in February 2020 to obtain the license plate number and parking location of the U.S. person’s car to provide this information to the Russian official upon his next trip to Russia.

Fuentes’s travel companion, at his request, took a photo of the U.S. person’s car.  A WhatsApp message from Fuentes’s travel companion to Fuentes contained a close-up photograph of the specified U.S. person’s car.  The manner in which Fuentes communicated with the Russian government official and his undertakings in this case are consistent with the tactics of the Russian intelligence services for spotting, assessing, recruiting, and handling intelligence assets and sources.


Fuentes had not notified the United States Attorney General, as required by law, that he was acting in the United States as an agent of the Russian government.


Fuentes’s sentencing is scheduled for May 17, in Miami, Florida in front of U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks.

Juan Antonio Gonzalez, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida; Matthew G. Olsen, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office; and Vernon T. Foret, Director of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Miami Field Office, made the announcement. 

Assistant Attorney General Olsen and U.S. Attorney Gonzalez commended the investigative efforts of the FBI and CBP. 

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Thakur of the Southern District of Florida and Trial Attorney Matt McKenzie of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 20-cr-20129.

###

You appear to be using an ad blocker

Shore News Network is a free website that does not use paywalls or charge for access to original, breaking news content. In order to provide this free service, we rely on advertisements. Please support our journalism by disabling your ad blocker for this website.