Loser spy in Miami: the story of a scientist from Mexico who worked for the Russian FSB

Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, a famous scientist, a citizen of Mexico and a resident of Singapore, led a double game and a double life on two continents and with two families - Mexican and Russian, reports with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

He was arrested in February 2020 at Miami airport as he and his Mexican wife were about to fly to Mexico City. At that time, Cabrera, a specialist in molecular cardiology, worked as a senior investigator at the National Heart Center of Singapore.

At the time of his arrest, he was charged with spying on the car of a Miami-based US government informant.

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US authorities later said in an official statement that “the defendant was under the direction and control of an individual who appears to be a Russian government official. The manner in which the accused and this individual communicated is consistent with Russian intelligence tactics used in identifying, assessing, recruiting and managing their assets and sources.”

At first, Cabrera denied his guilt, but on February 15 of this year he decided to make a deal with justice.
According to some reports, prosecutors will now request a four-year sentence for him on one count of acting in the interests of a foreign power on US soil. Otherwise, he could well have faced a 10-year sentence.
He will be sentenced on June 21, with prosecutors wanting to deport the failed spy as soon as he has served his term in federal prison.

Successful scientist - unsuccessful spy

The surprising (although one can be surprised today by Russian spies) story of Cabrera's failed intelligence operation began in 2019, when his Russian wife and two daughters traveled from Germany to Russia to resolve some bureaucratic issues. When they tried to return, they were not released from Russia.

Cabrera (according to open sources, a person with that name studied in Germany, as well as in Russia - at the Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University) went to Russia to try to understand the situation, and there a Russian official contacted him, whom they had previously met through work.

As follows from the documents of the investigation, this same official, whose name is not known, advised Cabrera that his Russian relatives should not travel to Europe and not try to obtain a visa to the United States.

It was then, according to the FBI, that Cabrera began to suspect that the official was actually an FSB officer.

Later, at a meeting in Moscow, the man showed Cabrera copies of the emails that the Mexican scholar had while looking for real estate in Miami.

Hinting at the scientist’s family circumstances known to him, the Russian official allegedly said that “they could help each other.”

At the direction of this official, Cabrera went to Miami and, under a false name, rented an apartment there in the same building where a US government informant of interest to Russian intelligence lived.

The name of the informant, whose vehicle Cabrera was supposed to locate, is not named in court documents; he is designated as a “confidential source” who previously provided Americans with information about Russian intelligence activities related to US national security issues.

It is impossible to conclude from the documents of the investigation whether the Mexican knew why his Russian handlers wanted him to rent an apartment there, but agents often do this by hiring outside people to perform certain tasks in order to protect themselves. Such recruited assistants are seldom aware of the true purpose of the mission.

Cabrera failed in his mission. That is, together with his wife, they were able to track the desired car and even take a picture of its license plate, but at the same time they violated the instructions of the curators, who demanded not to take any photos, but simply to find out where this car was parked.

The unfortunate spy so insistently sat on the tail of the car when it entered the parking lot near the house, and so openly photographed the license plate that it caught the eye of the guard behind the monitor of the surveillance camera.
On the evening of February 16, 2020, when the couple were about to fly to Mexico City, they were stopped by US border guards and during the search they found the same photo on the phone of Cabrera's wife.

“Too trusting of people”

For many, it is still a mystery why a well-known and certainly not devoid of intelligence scientist decided to risk his career and reputation by getting involved in such a dubious adventure with Russian intelligence.

Before his arrest, Cabrera worked as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine under the joint patronage of the American Duke University and the National University of Singapore. He defended his doctorate in the field of molecular microbiology in Russia and in the field of molecular cardiology in Germany.

In 2018, Cabrera was appointed director of the FEMSA Biotechnology Center of the Monterrey Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious private universities in Mexico.

And in his hometown of El Espinal in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, Cabrera is considered something of a local hero who promoted science, treated diabetics and helped rebuild the city after a devastating earthquake.

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“This is all very strange, because he is a real altruist, he always helped others,” El Espinal Mayor Haziel Matus told reporters shortly after the scientist’s arrest.

And Victor Serebryany, professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University who knows Cabrera well, believes that his fame played a cruel joke on the scientist, and bad people took advantage of this.

“He is a born leader, but he is too trusting of people,” says Professor Serebryany.

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