As he stood in Miami federal court, Hector Cabrera Fuentes didn’t exactly look like an “international man of mystery.”
But Cabrera, a stocky Mexican citizen, was charged Tuesday with being an “unregistered foreign agent” for Russia. He is accused of spying on at least one U.S. informant in South Florida, though court filings provided only sketchy details of the allegations.
Cabrera was arrested the day before by FBI agents after he was stopped at Miami International Airport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who inspected his cellphone before his scheduled departure for Mexico.
Facing serious charges
Fuentes was charged with acting within the United States on behalf of a foreign government — in this case, Russia — without notifying the U.S. attorney general, and conspiracy to do the same, according to the Justice Department. A pretrial detention hearing was set for Friday in U.S. magistrate court in Miami and arraignment for March 3 in the same court.
The case involved the FBI and U.S. Customs and Border Protection as well as an assistant attorney general for national security and the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
How the case unfolded
According to the Justice Department, a Russian government official recruited Fuentes, a resident of Singapore, in 2019.
Fuentes traveled twice to Moscow to meet with the official, the Justice Department said, and during the second meeting received a physical description of the U.S. government source’s vehicle. The Russian official told Fuentes to locate the car, obtain the source’s vehicle license plate number, and note the physical location of the source’s vehicle with the goal of providing that information in April or May.
According to a criminal affidavit, Cabrera traveled from Mexico City to Miami last Thursday, rented a Chrysler sedan and drove directly to a Miami-area condominium complex.
The affidavit says Cabrera visited the complex to spy on a resident at the “direction” of an agent with the Russian Intelligence Service, which operates under President Vladimir Putin.
It turned out the resident was an informant for the FBI’s counterintelligence division who provides information on Russian spying activities in South Florida. Before he was asked to leave the complex, Cabrera’s wife took a photo of the federal informant’s car and license plate.
Cabrera was visiting Miami on a business and tourism visa. His cellphone showed there had been interaction between Cabrera and his Russian handler, according to the affidavit.
The man’s background
In a brief hearing, Cabrera, 35 revealed he had bank accounts and jobs in different parts of the world.
He told a magistrate judge that he was making $7,500 a month as a researcher at the National University of Singapore and another $5,000 a month from a part-time job with an Israeli company in Germany, along with holding about $100,000 in bank accounts in Mexico, Singapore and the United States.
“None of my family knows I’m here,” Cabrera said, explaining to Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley that it would be difficult to gain access to his money outside the United States to pay for a defense attorney. She assigned a temporary public defender to represent Cabrera, who faces pretrial detention because prosecutor Michael Thakur said he is a flight risk.
A second wife in Russia
Cabrera also told the FBI agents that he had a second wife, who is Russian with two daughters. He said he met with them on his trips to Russia while he met with the Putin government’s intelligence agent.
The agent instructed Cabrera not to tell his Russian wife that he was meeting with him. He also promised Cabrera that he would help the Russian wife and her daughters get out of Russia.
“We can help each other,” the Russian agent told Cabrera.
— Compiled by ArLuther Lee for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Information provided by The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
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