Alan Phillip Gross (born May 2, 1949) is a United States government contractor employed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In December 2009 he was arrested in Cuba while working on a program funded under the 1996 Helms–Burton Act, which explicitly called for overthrow of Castro's government. He was prosecuted in 2011 after being accused of crimes against the Cuban state for furtively bringing military-grade communication equipment designed to evade detection to members of Cuba's Jewish community. After being accused of working for American intelligence services in January 2010, he was convicted of spying and for "acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state" in March 2011. US sources widely rejected the idea that Gross was a spy, t