Microsoft said the 12th suspected member of a Russian spy ring operating in the United States was an employee at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters.
The man, a Russian citizen in his early 20s named Alexei Karetnikov, worked for Microsoft as a software tester for about nine months, a spokeswoman for Microsoft in Moscow, who declined to be identified in line with company rules, said by e-mail Wednesday.
The Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the news.
Ten members of the spy ring pleaded guilty to conspiring to serve as unregistered foreign agents on July 8 in a U.S. federal court in Manhattan. They admitted to carrying money or coded messages, secretly communicating with Russian officials and instructing others on how to find information useful to Russia. Their objective was to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles after constructing false American identities, prosecutors said.
Karetnikov was deported Tuesday on charges of violating U.S. immigration laws, Itar-Tass reported, citing Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Karetnikov admitted to the violation and agreed to deportation to avoid court proceedings, the report said.
The Facebook page of a person identified as Alexei Karetnikov shows that he is married and graduated from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 2009. He worked for a company called Neobit in addition to Microsoft, according to the Facebook page.
A St. Petersburg-based software developer called OOO NeoBIT lists Karetnikov’s university among its partners and the Federal Security Service among its clients, according to the company’s web site.
No one at NeoBIT’s offices answered repeated calls.
Strategic Forecasting said Tuesday that another member of the ring tried to get the risk advisory group to install software he said his company had developed.
A man calling himself Donald Heathfield held five meetings with an employee of Austin, Texas-based Stratfor in an effort to get the firm to use his program, chief executive George Friedman said. Heathfield, who later identified himself as Andrei Bezrukov, was one of 10 people U.S. authorities traded for four Russians on July 9 in Vienna.
“We suspect that had this been done, our servers would be outputting to Moscow,” Friedman said. “We did not know at the time who he was. We have since reported the incident to the FBI.”
Bezrukov and his partner in the network were sentenced to time served and deported after agreeing to give up their home on Trowbridge Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and all the funds in four bank accounts. Bezrukov’s partner, who was identified as Tracey Foley at the time of her arrest, told the court that her real name was Yelena Vavilova.
Bezrukov, Vavilova and the other members of the spy ring are being debriefed at the Foreign Intelligence Service’s compound in southern Moscow, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported. That process may last weeks, it said.