SPY GAMES

Wannabe Russian Spy Sentenced to Five Years In Prison

A satellite engineer turned to the Kremlin to solve his family’s dire financial straits.

A satellite engineer who was convicted of attempting to sell sensitive satellite information to a person he believed to be a Russian spy has been sentenced to five years in federal prison. Gregory Allen Justice, a California engineer who worked on military and commercial satellite programs for Boeing, had pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, admitting that he had stolen trade secrets from the aerospace giant in order to sell them for $3,500 to a person he believed to be an agent of Russian intelligence—and who was, in fact, an agent of the FBI. According to an affidavit, Justice told the agent that he “wanted to try to build the type of relationship that existed in The Americans,” a television show about undercover Soviet spies.