Mexican man pleads guilty to acting as a Russian agent in the US

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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.


DOJ

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