Russian Sleeper Cells in Brazil
The New York Times has uncovered a network of Russian elite spies, masquerading as Brazilian citizens leading seemingly normal lives in Brazil. Let’s find out how they did it!
What Do We know?
According to The New York Times, Brazilian counterintelligence have discovered “at least nine” Russian officers operating under Brazilian cover identities.
Brazil says their investigation spanned more than eight countries
The now blown covers were hiding the identities of Russian nationals part of a wider, global, Russian spy program. This program by the U.S. Department of Justice referred to as the Illegals Program.
The Answers Are in the Data
With Mr. Ferreira, a seemingly normal Brazilian citizen who had studied and received a degree at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, U.S., things started to get out of hand when he was employed in an internship position with the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The CIA had – somehow – become aware of Mr. Ferreira’s private life irregularities in the past. On basis of that, presumably, the CIA notified the Dutch Authorities that a possible Russian Intelligence Agent was on his way to the Netherlands. He was then denied entry.
Shortly after his reentry to Brazil, he was arrested by the Brazilian Police under an initial suspicion of faking his own birth certificate. His “mother”, now deceased, never had children, other family members revealed.
A cover blown, by the looks of it:
“Federal agents began searching for what they called “ghosts”: people with legitimate birth certificates, who spent their lives without any record of actually being in Brazil and who appeared suddenly as adults rapidly collecting identity documents.
To find these ghosts, agents began looking for patterns in millions of birth records, passports, driver’s licenses and social security numbers.
Some of that could be automated, but not all Brazilian databases can be easily linked and searched digitally. Much of it had to be done by hand.
That analysis allowed Operation East to unravel the whole Russian operation.” (The New York Times)
Cracks in the Foundation
Sleeper agents may blend in to their surroundings exceptionally well, but rigorous data analysis can reveal cracks in the foundation, as indicated in the case above. And in some cases it’s not just cracks, but major irregularities, visible in plain sight.
In the case of another agent Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, whose cover is now also blown, this attempted normal life in Brazil was so surrounded by a mysterious fog that it allegedly had the alarm bells sound among friends and colleagues.
“He took sudden trips to Europe and Asia, and joked about conducting “industrial espionage” against competitors.
He took sudden trips to Europe and Asia, and joked about conducting “industrial espionage” against competitors. He sometimes posed as a customer with other printing companies and once sent one of his employees to intern at a rival business and report back.
He also seemed terrified of cameras and so disliked having his photograph taken that one former employee recalled joking that he might have been “wanted by the Federal Police.”
Mr. Shmyrev panicked when a local newspaper published a photograph of him standing across from Rio’s mayor at the opening of a technology hub, Mr. Martinez recalled.” (The New York Times)”
Suspicious? Yes. Full story here.