Federal prosecutors have asked a United States District Judge in Manhattan to impose a prison sentence of up to two years on a Russian woman who pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about her intelligence ties and who was jailed pre-trial after cyber-stalking a key government investigator.
The sentencing request was filed late Thursday, just days before the defendant, Nomma Zarubina, 35, is scheduled to appear in court on June 11. Earlier this year, Zarubina agreed to plead guilty to one charge of making false statements to the FBI regarding her relationship with Russia's premier intelligence agency, the FSB, as well as one count of naturalization fraud linked to the interstate transport of women for prostitution.
A government-appointed defense attorney had requested last week that Zarubina be spared further jail time, citing her lack of a prior criminal record and the fact that she has been incarcerated since December.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain revoked her bail late last year following Zarubina's repeated refusal to stop contacting an FBI case agent who was expected to be a witness in her prosecution.
However, case documents made public late Thursday illustrate that prosecutors want the judge to impose a harsher penalty—between 18 to 24 months—on Zarubina, who previously insisted when entering her guilty plea that she had actually assisted the FBI and shared information with the CIA.
"The defendant lied to the FBI in connection with a sensitive investigation into malign foreign influence," prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. "She helped run a prostitution business over the course of several years. She intentionally omitted her participation in that criminal enterprise on her naturalization application in an effort to obtain United States citizenship. And then, after being arrested and released on bail, she repeatedly taunted, harassed, and threatened Case Agent-1."
The prosecution's memorandum also explicitly detailed the origins of the government's interest in Zarubina. The FBI began investigating her in 2020 because they were scrutinizing her employer, Elena Branson, a U.S.-Russian dual national. Branson, who fled the United States for Russia in 2020 after the FBI searched her Manhattan apartment, was indicted in 2022 on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of the Russian government. She remains a fugitive.
Prosecutors allege that Branson’s organization, the Russian Center New York, functioned as a propaganda arm for the Kremlin. Zarubina served as a policy advisor for the center and maintained its website.
While many of the documents in the case remain classified, the sentencing memo provided rare detail into the broader malign-influence probe. Prosecutors noted that, at the behest of her FSB handlers—who assigned her the codename "Alyssa" – Zarubina attended the 2021 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. Her objective, the government said, was "to help identify journalists who would be willing to provide positive coverage of the event and of Russia more generally." The government's memorandum included two photographs of Zarubina posing alongside individuals that prosecutors identified as intelligence targets.
Alongside the government's sentencing request, a letter written by Zarubina to the judge was made public on Thursday. In it, she stated that she has used her time in detention to advance her studies and expressed a desire to pursue a doctoral degree in the United States once she serves her sentence.
"I know that my time in prison can be a great source for my research. I am highly motivated and positive, and I know God will help me with everything, even if it looks a bit sad right now," Zarubina wrote. "I already know the topics I want to discover: international security issues, information influence through soft power, and more."
Zarubina informed the judge that she intends to fight any deportation proceedings so she can remain close to her U.S.-born daughter, who was a toddler at the time of her offenses.
"My daughter cannot go with me out of the U.S. because her father will not allow her to, and I can be arrested in Russia upon arrival," she wrote.
Concluding her letter on a striking note, Zarubina expressed hope that she might eventually find employment within the same American intelligence apparatus that arrested her.
"I strongly believe that I can be valuable to the American intelligence community as an analyst," she wrote. "If I am deported, I will never give up my love for this Country and the memories I made during my 11 years of living here."
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