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Scientist Who Moonlit as a Hapless Russian Spy Gets Prison Time in Miami

Hector Cabrera Fuentes’s double life unraveled when a security guard caught him trying to spy on an FBI agent.

A Mexican scientist visiting Miami was sentenced Tuesday to four years and a day in prison for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Russian intelligence, the Miami Herald reports. Hector Cabrera Fuentes, 37, researched cardiac disease by day and clumsily collected intel for a Russian handler at night. He was arrested in Feb. 2020 as he and his wife were attempting to go back to Mexico. A security guard spotted a hapless Fuentes and his wife trying to gathering surveillance on an FBI informant in Miami by driving to the agent’s apartment building and taking photos of the agent’s car and license plate. The agent has never been identified but he was said to be informing on Russian spying activity in South Florida, according to court records. After his arrest, it emerged that Cabrera was living a double life with separate families in Russia and in Mexico. He apologized for his actions at a Tuesday hearing, saying “I have zero interest in getting involved in anything like that from now on.”