A love-struck Moscow mole from Brooklyn who tried to infiltrate the U.S. political and media circles has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators after drunkenly texting an FBI agent, "Catch me, baby." Bleached-blonde, Nomma Zarubina, 35, was first arrested in November 2024 for allegedly lying about her Kremlin links.
She was released on bail — but that freedom didn't last long. After investigators uncovered a series of flirtatious messages she had sent to an agent, authorities moved quickly. By December, Zarubina was behind bars. "Catch me baby," Zarubina texted the federal agent — who appeared to be the object of her unreturned affection — firing off the message at 4:17 a.m. last September.
Love Dooms Her
The text was part of a strange, late-night exchange sent nearly a year after her arrest, underscoring just how surreal the situation had become. "I am sooooo bad," she wrote the same night — in a thread she confessed she sent while drinking heavily.
Despite repeated warnings from the judge to stop contacting the agent, Zarubina continued to send messages. On one night in November 2025 alone, she bombarded him with 65 texts — telling him "I love you," then, when no reply came, lashing out and calling him a "b—h."
In her messages, the Russian-born woman also dropped the name of Maria Butina, the admitted Russian agent who served 15 months in prison after infiltrating conservative circles in an effort to influence U.S. Republican politics.
"I guess Butina got more attention," she huffed to the agent.
Before she was sent to jail, Zarubina had been living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Court records say she even sent the FBI agent a flirtatious text — "mmmmm" — along with a photo of herself drinking a glass of red wine while wearing a cowboy hat.
According to a federal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, the suspected Moscow mole later admitted during meetings with the FBI in the summer of 2024 that she had been working for the Kremlin since December 2020, operating under the code name "Alyssa."
Always Suspicious
Investigators say Russian handlers instructed her to build connections at Washington, DC think tanks, within U.S. military circles, and among journalists. They allegedly pressed her for ways to reach some of those contacts, with plans to invite them to Russia and "convert" them to what was described as the "Russian way of thinking."
Along the way, Zarubina reportedly forced several influential Capitol Hill figures to pose for photos with her, according to the head of a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes a free and democratic Russia.
That nonprofit's president, Dmitry Valuev, who leads Russian America for Democracy in Russia, said his group had viewed Zarubina as suspicious for years before her arrest. He claimed they had monitored her work for what he described as a shady Russian nonprofit, where she served as a representative to the United Nations.
Court filings also reveal that the FBI first spoke with Zarubina back in October 2020 as part of an investigation into her close friend Elena Branson. Branson was indicted in 2022 for allegedly pushing Russian foreign influence through an organization known as Russian Center New York. She fled to Moscow during the investigation and remains at large.
Zarubina told federal investigators that she worked for Branson but repeatedly denied having any contact with Russian intelligence agents during interviews in 2021, 2022, and 2023 — statements prosecutors now say were false.
