Espionage

The Russian Spy Run by Dumb and Dumber

Over the course of two years, the FBI surveilled Buryakov meeting with his handlers more than 50 times, sometimes doing covert handoffs like passing a bag or magazine to Sporyshev.

“Notably, despite discussing on approximately one dozen occasions the need to meet to transfer ‘tickets,’ [Buryakov] and Igor Sporyshev, the defendants have—other than one occasion where they discussed going to a movie—never been observed attending, or discussing in any detail, events that would typically require tickets, such as a sporting event or a concert,” the complaint against them read.

His handlers’ careless craftsmanship may be what landed Buryakov in prison.

Sporyshev and Podobnyy lamented to each other that their spy work mostly involved massaging the egos of potential recruits, and not the glamorous shootouts they’d expected after seeing movies like James Bond, according to the criminal complaint against them. They discussed how Directorate S—the SVR program that oversaw the Illegals program, and likely also Buryakov—was the only branch doing “real intelligence.