Oh, please don't throw me in the briar patch...

Benjamin Weiser has an article in The New York Times about more Russians giving up easy:

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan say that two more of the suspected Russian agents arrested last weekend gave statements to the FBI in which they waived their Miranda rights and admitted to being Russian citizens who had been living under false identities in the United States. The two, living under the aliases of Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, are a married couple who most recently lived in Arlington, Virginia. They have two young sons.
They and a third defendant, known as Mikhail Semenko, are scheduled to appear for bail hearings on Friday afternoon before a magistrate judge in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.
Writing to the judge before the hearings, prosecutors asked the judge to deny the three bail, citing many of the same arguments they made in Manhattan in bail hearings for three other suspected agents. Two of those agents were denied bail, while the third will be allowed to serve a form of house arrest if she meets certain conditions. Prosecutors said there was “little doubt that, if released, the conspirators could call upon substantial and sophisticated resources to assist them. They are skilled deceivers who have repeatedly betrayed those closest to them and would readily do so again, by fleeing,” the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, wrote. The letter says that after his arrest, Mr. “Zottoli” acknowledged to FBI agents that he is a Russian citizen whose true name is Mikhail Kutzik, that he used a phony date of birth, and that his father lived in Russia.
Ms. “Mills”, the prosecutors wrote, admitted that she was, in fact, a Russian citizen named Natalia Pereverzeva. She said that her parents, brother, and sister are still living in Russia, the prosecutors said. Ms. Pereverzeva’s family ties in Russia strongly argued in favor of her detention, prosecutors said. They also revealed that, since the couple’s arrest, they had been making arrangements with a friend of the family to care for their two children with the goal of sending the children back to Russia to live with other family members. Prosecutors made clear they believe that with her children in Russia, Ms. Pereverzeva would only have more incentive to flee the United States if she were released.
Mr. Bharara’s office is expected to seek to bring the three defendants in Virginia, as well as two others who face hearings in Boston this month, to Manhattan for prosecution in the secret agents case. Prosecutors have not yet detailed publicly what they believe Mr. Kutzik and Ms. Pereverzeva did for the Russians, but they said the couple traveled to New York four times to pick up money and supplies for their work as clandestine agents for the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service and a successor to the KGB.
In one visit to New York in 2006, the couple drove northwest of the city to Wurtsboro, New York, where Mr. “Zottoli” dug up a package that had been buried two years earlier by another conspirator, according to the complaint. They then drove to Washington, checked into a hotel, and Mr. “Zottoli” was seen on court-ordered surveillance wearing a full money belt, the government said. They say Mr. “Zottoli” purported to be an American citizen born in Yonkers, who came to the United States in 2001; and that Ms. “Mills” claimed to be a Canadian who arrived two years later. They lived together in various locations, including Seattle, and moved to Arlington, Virginia last October, according to the criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The complaint says in a 2006 court-authorized search of the couple’s apartment in Seattle, investigators found spiral notebooks that included pages of apparently random columns of numbers, which the FBI says were codes to decipher clandestine radio transmissions that the agents used to communicate with the SVR in Moscow.
Prosecutors said that, in another search conducted this week of two safe-deposit boxes rented by the couple, agents found eight unmarked envelopes, each containing $10,000 in apparently new $100 bills. A similar amount of money, packaged in “exactly the same way” was found in a search this week of a safe-deposit box rented by two other suspected agents, known as the Murphys, who lived in Montclair, New Jersey, prosecutors noted. Agents found more money and false passports and identity documents in the other safe-deposit box used by the couple, prosecutors said.
Indeed, the issue of whether Ms. Pereverzeva’s fraudulent identity documents were adequate for her covert work was a matter of concern for the couple, which communicated their views to the Murphys in Montclair, the government has said. As recently as 9 March, the Montclair couple sent a message to the SVR in Moscow, saying that neither Ms. “Mills” nor Mr. “Zottoli”— referred to as M— could leave the United States “because whatever papers she has now are no longer sufficient for travel. As of this year, the doc requirements for entry from the US to wherever she needs to go have changed,” the message said, adding, “M needs your advice on the situation and his options.”

Rico says this is going to make a great mini-series; sort of "Smiley's People Meet the Three Stooges"...