Google Translate landed an employee of Center 795, which consists of elite units from the GRU and FSB and was created after Russia's war in Ukraine began in 2022.
Insider has published a new investigation by Hristo Grozev, Roman Dobrokhotov, Michael Weiss, Fidelius Schmidt and Nikolay Antoniadis (you can read the full investigation here), which tells how Denis Alimov - a 42-year-old Russian veteran of the elite special unit "Alpha" of the FSB, and since 2023 - an operational officer at Center 795, was detained in Colombia on February 24, 2026, for contacting a hired killer using Google Translate.
He was detained at El Dorado Airport in Bogota on the morning of February 24, after being wanted on an Interpol red notice activated at the request of federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. Alimov is accused of orchestrating an assassination attempt on two prominent Chechen dissidents based in Europe, offering a $1.5 million bounty on each of their heads.
The investigation states that Center 795 is a Russian assassination directorate designed, according to leaked Russian intelligence documents, to be impossible to detect, but was nevertheless uncovered not through years of patient counterintelligence, not through a defector, but because the two men spoke different languages and used Google Translate.
The FBI had been monitoring Alimov for more than a year - in part by reading messages translated via Google Translate that he exchanged with one of his potential foreign hitmen.
According to Alimov's indictment, he hired Darko Durovic, who spoke Serbian and lived in the United States. The indictment suggests that both primary targets originated from a "republic" within Russia, a term that applies to several regions, including Chechnya. Federal prosecutors allege that Alimov recruited Durovich as his primary field asset for the operation.
In 2024, Alimov gave Durovich an advance payment of $60,000 and promised an additional $1.5 million for each target successfully "deported to Russia." Durovich was also told that if the operation was successful and other targets were identified, a third person wanted "dead or alive" could bring a reward in excess of $10 million.
Lost in Translation
Center 795 was designed, at considerable institutional expense, to be "isolated" — sealed against the kind of electronic intrusion that had compromised previous Russian intelligence operations. Its commanders had taken precautions: encrypted messaging apps, pseudonymous identities, separate communications. What they had not taken into account was the language incompatibility of their own operatives.
Denis Alimov spoke Russian, Durovic Serbian. Neither spoke the other’s native language at a level sufficient for operational communication. To bridge this gap, the two decided to use Google Translate, translating Durovic’s Serbian field reports into Russian for his coordinator and Alimov’s Russian instructions back into Serbian for his agent.
The messages themselves were transmitted over encrypted apps that both believed were secure. But Google operated through servers in the United States, which were fully within the scope of an FBI surveillance warrant. Thus, investigators were able to access the log files of these translations directly from the service provider, gaining access to the content of the entire operational communication flow in real time in clear text between Alimov and Durovic.
A source close to the investigation later noted that this was even better than wiretapping, because the messages arrived transcribed.
For example, on November 28, 2024, in connection with one of their "projects", Durovic sent a message to Alimov, saying: "I can't confirm the location in New York right now because I'm in Montenegro. I'll be back in New York around December 20 and I'll try to find him in New York... [He] tries to create the impression that he's always in the EU to cover his tracks, but in reality he's in the US most of the time. This is the information I received from my contacts."
A separate "project", Durovich wrote to Alimov on December 19, concerns a victim who spends his time in "a white villa, near the sea... surrounded by a white fence/wall, and on the gate there is some Islamic sign". The problem was finding which villa it was, as there were several matching this description. "I believe we will find him soon, he can't be moving all the time. He will relax and fall into the trap at some point."
Durovich also sought help from an unnamed accomplice based in the United States. On Christmas Eve 2024, he sent them a message: "I have people who would pay a lot of money to have this guy and others like him arrested and handed over to them. I currently have 3 or more people wanted for arrest... We are getting $1.5 million for each person. We need an associate who won't ask for much but will provide us with this information and once I confirm the location (I will check it myself), we will get the money." The potential subcontractor asked Alimov for a refundable advance to fund a "hunt team".
According to the U.S. superseding indictment against him, Alimov provided Durovich with a package of technical intelligence information, including IP addresses and European phone numbers previously used by one of these targets.
Durovich's use of Google Translate is not his only operational failure. He made two trips to Russia in July and October 2024, attempting to disguise his destination by booking fake vacations in Turkey while continuing to Moscow on connecting flights under his real name. Each time he returned to the United States, he was questioned by FBI special agents who had access to his airline records. He has vehemently denied visiting Russia. However, the FBI, continuing to monitor him and reading his virtual diary in Google Translate, arrested him in March 2025.