Two Spy Suspects Reveal Their True Russian Identities

Via Newsweek.com -

Two suspects arrested in the FBI's crackdown this week on an alleged ring of deep-cover Russian spies have admitted that they are not the Canadian and American citizens they claimed to be. Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, who lived as a married couple first in Seattle and last October moved to Arlington, Va., confessed to investigators after their arrests last weekend that they are both Russian citizens and that their real names are different from the ones they have been living under in the U.S., according to a letter prosecutors sent to a federal magistrate in Manhattan on Friday.

According to the letter, after their arrests, both Zottoli and Mills waived their Miranda rights and talked about their real identities. Zottoli, the letter says, "admitted to FBI agents that he is a Russian citizen whose true name is Mikhail Kutzik." He also acknowledged that his real date of birth is different from one he has used while posing as Zottoli and that his father lived in Russia.

The letter also says that Mills admitted that her real name is Natalia Pereverzeva and she is a Russian citizen. She said that her parents, brother, and sister all currently live in Russia.

Mills and Zottoli are the second and third of 10 suspects arrested in the FBI roundup of an alleged ring of spies planted in the U.S. by Russian's foreign-intelligence service, the SVR, to confess that they are not who they have pretended to be for the last several years.

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According to RIA Novosti (Russia)...

An alleged Russian spy who jumped bail in Cyprus, "appears to have left" the country, CBC quoted the Cypriot president as saying....Dimitris Christofias also told reporters in Nicosia that Cypriot authorities acted appropriately in handling the case, while the U.S. failed to provide the necessary documents in time. "Only now are they providing them [documentation], only now are they preparing them," Christofias said. "I don't think it is appropriate to apportion blame to the Cyprus Republic."