Scientist turned bumbling spy gets 4 years for South Florida caper

A Mexican scientist turned bungling Russian spy was sentenced Tuesday in a Miami-Dade federal courtroom to four years and one day for acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Hector Cabrera Fuentes, 37, who pleaded guilty to the charge in February, has already served more than two years. Cabrera was arrested on Feb. 16, 2020, by FBI agents at Miami International Airport as he was preparing to return to Mexico. Two days earlier, he and his Mexican wife were spotted conducting clumsy cloak-and-dagger surveillance on an FBI informant residing in the Miami area. Neither the target of the surveillance nor the location of the home has been identified.

On the night of the surveillance, the pair drove to the informant’s apartment complex, identified his car and took a photo of the license tag for sharing with the scientist’s handler.

Since his arrest, Cabrera has been held in Miami’s Federal Detention Center.

At Tuesday’s hearing before U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, Cabrera apologized and said he now knows what he did was wrong.

“I have zero interest in getting involved in anything like that from now on,” Cabrera said.

He said the episode was a life lesson, instilling in him the realization that “freedom comes first and the family, too.”

Cabrera was leading a double life — as a cardiac scientist and a foreign agent at the time of his arrest. He also had a complicated personal life, being married to a woman in Russia in addition to the Mexican wife, according to court records. The Russian wife was having trouble gaining permission to leave Russia, which might have been a way to apply leverage on Cabrera.

A Russian official, not identified in court, directed Cabrera to target the Miami informant and take photos of his car, license plate and parking location. The target was believed to be providing intelligence to the FBI on Russian spying activities in South Florida, records show.

“The manner in which the defendant 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,” according to a factual statement filed as part of a plea agreement.

Cabrera’s defense attorneys, Ronald Gainor and Amber Donner, urged

Judge Middlebrooks to give their client a “fair” sentence. In a sentencing memo, they described Cabrera as “a world-renowned biochemist and cardiovascular scientist” educated in Russia, Germany and Singapore. They provided letters of support from colleagues worldwide. They also noted that “his career is only surpassed by his charitable work supporting the people of his hometown Oaxaca, Mexico.”

Before his arrest, Cabrera’s primary employment was as a researcher with the National Heart Centre Singapore. He also had a “joint appointment” at Duke-NUS Medical School, which is a collaboration between Duke University and the National University of Singapore.

Cabrera had published more than 100 scientific articles and is recognized as a leader in the field of cardiac disease, according to his defense lawyers.

At a previous court hearing on his pretrial detention, Cabrera said 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.

All of Cabrera’s appointments were suspended, a spokesperson for DukeNUS told the Herald.

According to an FBI criminal affidavit, Cabrera arrived in South Florida with his wife on Feb. 13, 2020, rented a Chrysler sedan and the following day drove to a Miami-area condominium complex where the informant lived.

Cabrera and his wife were spotted by a security guard tailgating their way into the gated parking lot.

Before Cabrera was asked to leave, his wife snapped a photo of the federal informant’s car and license plate. The plan was to turn the photo over to his Russian handler on his next visit to the country, according to court records.

“The defendant’s travel companion, at the request of [Cabrera], took a photo of the specified U.S. [informant’s] car,” according to the factual statement filed with Cabrera’s plea deal. “A WhatsApp message from the defendant’s travel companion to the defendant contained a close-up photograph of the specified U.S. [informant’s] car.”

Cabrera, who was visiting Miami on a business and tourism visa, told FBI agents during questioning after his arrest that he had met with the Russian intelligence handler in Russia several times in 2019.

Cabrera’s cellphone showed that there had been extensive interaction between him and the handler, according to the affidavit. Cabrera also told the FBI agents about the second wife, a woman with two daughters. He said he visited with them on his trips to Russia where he met with the Putin government’s intelligence agent who was his handler.

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 wife and daughters get out of Russia.

“We can help each other,” the Russian agent told Cabrera.