12th Russian man in spy probe made 2 trips to US, doing 2 stints at low-level Microsoft jobs

Russian man in spy probe worked twice at Microsoft

WASHINGTON — A 23-year-old Russian man who became the 12th person taken into custody in the recent spy ring investigation made two trips to the United States, both times going to work for Microsoft in low-level jobs.

Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said Wednesday that Alexey Karetnikov interned at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., from June until late August 2008, then returned to Russia.

Gellos said that last year the same group at Microsoft that Karetnikov worked for on his first trip hired him as an entry-level software tester.

According to the Microsoft spokesman, the company has reviewed Karetnikov’s activities and is confident that the Russian did not compromise software, the company’s internal resources or its customers.

Though he lived for a while little more than a dozen miles from one of the Russian agent couples who pleaded guilty and were deported, FBI agents never found any connection between Karetnikov and the couple, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills.

Zottoli and Mills, whose real names are Mikhail Kutsik and Natalia Pereverzeva, moved to Virginia last October, the same month that Karetnikov re-entered the United States to take the full-time Microsoft job.

Federal immigration authorities took Karetnikov into custody in Seattle on June 28, the day after the arrests of Zottoli, Mills and three other Russian agent couples who infiltrated suburban America and who were deported last week in exchange for four people convicted of betraying Moscow to the West.

Karetnikov was deported Tuesday. Federal law enforcement officials said they investigated his activities thoroughly and that had the U.S. government been able to bring a criminal prosecution against him, it would have. The officials say that to date, they have uncovered no evidence that he possessed, retained or passed on sensitive or classified information.

Associated Press writer Doug Esser in Seattle contributed to this report.