Earl Edwin Pitts

Earl Edwin Pitts (born September 23, 1953) is a former FBI special agent who was convicted of espionage for selling information to Soviet and Russian intelligence services. History Pitts was arrested in 1996 for selling U.S. intelligence secrets to Soviet and Russian intelligence for payments in excess of $224,000 from 1987 to 1992. In February 1997, he pleaded guilty to conspiring and attempting to commit espionage, in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. On June 27, 1997, Earl Pitts was sentenced by a federal judge to 27 years in prison. Prosecutors had requested only 24½ years. The FBI learned of Pitts' spying through human intelligence. His KGB handler, Alexsandr Karpov, defected to the United States and named Pitts as a Soviet mole in the FBI during his debriefings. Pitts was snared in a 16-month FBI sting that ended with his arrest while he was stationed at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. The FBI caught Pitts by convincing him that the Russian government wanted to reactivate him as a spy. Pitts offered his services to the Soviets in 1987 while he was assigned to the FBI's New York office where he was assigned to hunt and recruit KGB officers.