Nomma Zarubina, the 35-year-old Russian native suspected of operating as a Kremlin asset in New York City, pleaded guilty on Thursday to two counts of making false statements. One count covered her lies to the FBI about contacts with Russian spy agents. The other covered a false claim on her naturalization application, where she denied any involvement in prostitution.
She faces up to 10 years in prison at her sentencing on June 11. She is also expected to be deported as a result of the felony conviction, the NY Post reported.
The case reads less like a spy thriller and more like a cautionary tale about what happens when intelligence operations meet personal chaos.
The FBI's Most Persistent Pen Pal
Zarubina was originally busted in November 2024 on charges she lied about her dealings with Kremlin spies, detailed in a federal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court. She was freed on bail. That didn't last.
After her release, Zarubina began texting the FBI agent involved in her case. Not with tips or legal inquiries, but with messages like "Catch me baby" and "I am sooooo bad." One message arrived at 4:17 a.m. last September. She also texted the agent "mmmmm" alongside a photo of herself drinking red wine in a cowboy hat.
The contact didn't stop. Court records show she messaged the agent 65 more times during a single night in November 2025.
Judge Laura Swain ruled that Zarubina had breached the conditions of her release on a $20,000 bond, calling the behavior "harassing." Zarubina landed behind bars in December.
The judge did not mince words:
"I hear the pain that you're in, and I hear the trouble and the conflict that's led us here today, but you're not helping yourself. You're not stopping this conduct."
Code Name 'Alyssa'
The FBI first met with Zarubina in October 2020, not because of her own activities, but as part of a probe into her close friend Elena Branson. Branson was indicted in 2022 for allegedly spreading Russian foreign influence through an organization called the Russian Center New York. She fled to Moscow during the investigation and is still at large.
During interviews in 2021, 2022, and 2023, Zarubina denied having any contact with Russian spy agents. She finally came clean during meetings in June and July 2024, confessing that she had been working for the Kremlin since December 2020 under the code name "Alyssa."
Along the way, she ended up convincing several Capitol Hill power brokers to pose with her for photos. She even name-dropped Maria Butina, an admitted Russian agent who served 15 months in prison for infiltrating conservative networks to influence U.S. Republican politics. Zarubina texted the FBI agent, "I guess Butina got more attention."
Dmitry Valuev, president of Russian America for Democracy in Russia, said his organization had flagged Zarubina as suspicious for years before her arrest and tracked her work for a "shady Russian nonprofit" as their representative to the UN.
Prostitution Charges and a Plea
Federal prosecutors separately accused Zarubina in April 2025 of participating in a scheme to transport women to engage in prostitution at an unidentified massage parlor in East Brunswick, New Jersey. That accusation formed the basis of the second false statement count, since she had denied any prostitution involvement on her naturalization application.
In court, Zarubina told the judge she "understood communicating with the FBI" and compared the Bureau's methods to Russian intelligence practices:
"They actually work the same as Russians work. They frame people, they build cases, you know."
She insisted she was not a "spy" and described the unnamed individual who recruited her:
"He influenced me. I don't know how — how to explain that. But my life became so different after I met him."
"My life now seems like a tragedy because I get almost every day threats from many people from many countries who think that I was a spy but they don't know the whole story."
What This Story Actually Tells Us
There is a temptation to treat this as a comedy. The wine selfie, the 65 texts in one night, the "Catch me baby" flirtation with a federal agent investigating you for espionage. It's absurd on its face.
But underneath the theatrics is a serious national security failure that took years to surface. Zarubina operated under a Kremlin code name for nearly four years before confessing. She lied through three years of FBI interviews. She rubbed elbows with Capitol Hill figures. Her close friend, indicted for Russian influence operations, escaped to Moscow and remains free.
This is how foreign intelligence penetration actually works. Not with Jason Bourne tradecraft, but with social manipulation, proximity to power, and a system too slow to catch the obvious. Zarubina posed for photos with lawmakers while operating under a code name assigned by Moscow. Nobody flagged it until she flagged herself.
The immigration angle deserves attention, too. Zarubina lied on her naturalization application to gain citizenship while simultaneously working for a foreign government. The system that was supposed to screen for exactly this kind of threat waved her through. That is not a bureaucratic hiccup. It is a structural vulnerability in how the United States vets people seeking to become citizens.
Conservatives have long argued that immigration vetting needs teeth, not just paperwork. Cases like this prove the point. When a Kremlin operative can lie her way to citizenship while running a parallel life as a foreign asset, the vetting process isn't a safeguard. It's a formality.
Zarubina will be sentenced on June 11. She'll likely be deported after that. Her friend Branson sits comfortably in Moscow. And somewhere in Washington, the lawmakers who smiled for photos with "Alyssa" are hoping nobody remembers.
