JOHN YANG: They seemed like ordinary Brazilians, starting businesses, building friendships, having romantic relationships.

They even had legitimate Brazilian birth certificates and passports.

But in reality, there were Russian intelligence agents leading double lives.

A New York Times investigation found that Moscow used Brazil as a launch pad for its global espionage operation.

Brazilian federal police uncovered the deception after a years long hunt dealing a massive blow to Vladimir Putin's spy program.

Ali Rogin recently spoke with New York Times reporters Michael Schwirtz and Jane Bradley.

ALI ROGIN: Thank you so much for joining me.

Jane, first to you.

What was it about the country of Brazil that made it so that Russia could base and train these deep cover operatives there?

JANE BRADLEY, The New York Times: The sources we spoke to in Brazil said a few things.

The first is that, you know, Brazil is known for being a very multicultural, diverse population, so it's easy for anyone, including a Russian spy, to blend in.

The second was that Brazilian passports are pretty powerful.

They're useful.

They get you into a lot of countries visa free.

So it was a really powerful tool to have for a Russian spy.

And then finally, and this is a more complex point, but there's a certain weakness in the Brazilian birth certificate or ID system, which makes it a really attractive target for a Russian.

ALI ROGI: So, Michael, these spies who were able to create this Persona and provide a backstory, Tell us about them.

They're called illegals.

That's how the Russian intelligence service refers to them.

They live and work in Brazil, and then what happens?

Russia intends to send them around the world to conduct operations.

MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ, The New York Times: You're right.

These individuals were not sent to Brazil to spy on Brazil necessarily.

They were meant to become Brazilian, and then they were to be sent out into the world to engage in the actual craft of espionage.

So we have some who were sent to Portugal.

We have another who got an internship in the Netherlands at The Hague, at the International Criminal Court.

Another was sent to the Middle East.

And the whole point of this program is to basically launder the identities so that anybody looking into their background will find only Brazilians.

ALI ROGIN: Jane, one of the people your investigation focuses on, his name, his Brazilian identity was Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich.

Who was he known as in Brazil, and who was he really?

JANE BRADLEY: Yeah.

So out of all the nine spies we looked at, he'd probably built the most impenetrable cover identity.

He had built a bonafide 3D printing business he had in Rio.

He had a Brazilian girlfriend who knew nothing of his real identity.

He lived in a nice apartment in a nice part of Rio.

They had a cat together.

He built friendships.

The people who knew him described him as someone who was quite shy, quite reserved, and was very afraid or disliked having his photo taken.

That was one of the things they thought was strange only in hindsight.

But outside of painting a picture of this workaholic who really seemed to care about the business, they didn't know much about Daniel.

And that is because, you know, Daniel wasn't his real name.

His real name, we discovered, is Artem Shmyrev.

And he secretly had a Russian wife who was also an intelligence officer posted in Greece.

What was really interesting as part of our investigation that we uncovered was this kind of this cache of text messages between Artem and his Russian wife.

In these texts, he's basically complaining about his lot and saying he's not where he wanted to be at this time.

In his life, he wasn't really getting any real results at work.

And his wife says, look, this is what you make of it.

If you wanted an ordinary family life, you've made the wrong choice.

And kind of tells him to get a grip.

Though she acknowledges that, look, the life they're living as these deep cover spies is not, in her words, what they were sold when they signed up to it.

She said they basically trick people into it.

ALI ROGIN: Unbelievable.

Michael, how did this firing unravel?

MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ: Well, it started in about spring 2022 with a tip from the CIA to the Brazilian Federal Police.

And what this tip was a warning that an individual with a Brazilian passport was flying into Sao Paulo from the Netherlands.

The name of the passport was Victor Muller Ferreira.

This individual's actual name was Sergey Cherkasov, and he was an officer with Russia's military intelligence service.

And once they arrested him and got him their headquarters, and under questioning, he was very cocky because he had a really airtight cover story.

His passport was authentic.

He had driver's license.

He had a certificate declaring that he had completed his.

His required military service.

He had a voter registration card, and he had this birth certificate.

And this turned out to be really the linchpin in the investigation.

As the police started looking into his birth certificate, they found family members of the woman he had named as his mother.

And when they interviewed this woman's family, they discovered that she had never had a child.

And that was the first break in the case.

And so they began this sort of colossal task of pouring over really, millions of identity documents looking for a similar pattern, somebody who had come to Brazil late in life as an adult, claiming a birth certificate and who immediately set out collecting all these other documents.

This search over three years turned up nine names and all of them were outed by the Brazilian authorities in what was a colossal blow to Vladimir Putin's spy program.

ALI ROGIN: Fascinating stuff.

Michael Schwirtz and Jane Bradley with the New York Times, thank you so much.

MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ: Thanks for having us.