BERLIN—After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on U.S. President Donald Trump, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials. The money was delivered to a Berlin hotel room in September and was intended as the first installment of a $1 million reward, according to U.S. officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by the Times, the newspaper reported. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing. But his apparent eagerness to sell the Trump “kompromat” — a Russian term for information used to gain leverage over someone — to U.S. spies raised suspicions among officials that he was part of an operation to feed the information into U.S. intelligence agencies and pit them against Trump. However, after handing over $100,000 of the $1 million dollar deal they had struck with the Russian, the officials were given unverified information about Trump, including bank records, emails, and what appeared to be Russian intelligence data, according to the New York Times.
The New York Times reports that the CIA handed $100,000 to an unnamed Russian intelligence source in a Berlin hotel room, allegedly expecting to get back stolen NSA hacking tools.