“Fuentes and his travel companion arrived at Miami International Airport to leave to United States, on their way to Mexico City. U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspected the phone of Fuentes’s travel companion and found a close-up image of the license plate of the U.S. Government source’s vehicle in the “recently deleted folder” of her phone. When asked about the photo, Fuentes admitted tasking his travel companion to take the photo of the vehicle’s license plate. CBP’s review of Fuentes’s phone revealed a WhatsApp message from his travel companion sent to Fuentes with the same photograph of the vehicle license plate.”
With the things he was up to, you would think he might have heard about using a long and complex password. Or keeping his personal phone 100% clean. The spy who knew too little I guess.
As an aside, it would be kinda cool to know the US Govt target and why? Politician? FBI agent? Trade rep? Was the person being recruited? Or were they innocent?
It might look like a check of a low-end intelligence implant. They are given this sort of tasks initially to prove their practicality.
The problem is Russia identifies hundreds of foreign mostly CIA plants like that annually and most are simply watched for more intel or getting deported.
Arresting this guy given he is a real spy and not framed is an obvious escalation and it is to be retaliated with hurt put on US citizens, mostly CIA officers and their recruits, mostly US citizens too.