An FBI-orchestrated sting operation — beginning at a downtown Washington intersection and ending in an Arlington park — led to the arrest of alleged Russian spy Mikhail Semenko.
Federal officials since Sunday have arrested six men and five women accused of being “covert Russian agents.” Semenko, who lived and worked in Arlington and is described by neighbors as being in his late 20s, was one of three Northern Virginia residents arrested.
The FBI’s operation to snare Semenko mimics pulp spy novels of a bygone era, replete with coded messages, clandestine meetings and a staged cash drop.
The sting began on Saturday when a federal agent posing as a Russian government official telephoned Semenko, according to FBI statements.
“Could we have met in Beijing in 2004?” the FBI’s undercover agent asked Semenko, according to FBI statements. Semenko responded, “I believe it was in Harbin.”
The two agreed to meet that evening at the corner of 10th and H streets NW, at which time they repeated the Beijing-Harbin exchange to verify each other’s identity, according to court documents.
The FBI agent and Semenko walked to a nearby park, where they sat on a bench and discussed past liaisons between Semenko and Russian officials, as well as the equipment Semenko used to communicate with his Russian government contacts.
The undercover agent eventually handed Semenko a folded newspaper concealing an envelope holding $5,000 cash.
“The money has to go to a park in Arlington tomorrow,” the agent said, according to FBI statements. Semenko agreed, and the undercover agent handed him a map of the “drop spot.”
Semenko memorized the location and returned the map to the agent “to be destroyed,” according to the FBI’s account.
FBI agents on Sunday videotaped Semenko leaving the newspaper and the cash at the park. Law officers later arrested Semenko and 10 others on charges of “conspiracy to act as unregistered agents of a foreign government.”
Foreign government agents must register with the U.S. attorney general’s office, which the FBI says Semenko and his colleagues failed to do.
The men and women arrested have, according to FBI statements, “one primary, long-tem goal: To become sufficiently ‘Americanized,’ such that they can gather information about the United States for Russia.”
Semenko and two Pentagon City residents — Patricia Mills and Michael Zottoli — are being held in a federal detention center in Alexandria and are scheduled to appear in court Thursday.
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the charges “completely unfounded.”
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