A ring of 10 Russian moles right out of a Cold War spy novel was smashed yesterday — and among those busted was a flame-haired, 007-worthy beauty who flitted from high-profile parties to top-secret meetings around Manhattan. Russian national Anna Chapman — a 28-year-old divorcee with a masters in economics, an online real-estate business, a fancy Financial District apartment and a Victoria’s Secret body — had been passing information to a Russian government official every Wednesday since January, authorities charged.
In one particularly slick spy exchange on St. Patrick’s Day, Chapman pulled a laptop out of a tote bag in a bookstore at Warren and Greenwich streets in the West Village while her handler lurked outside, receiving her message on his own computer, the feds said. A similar exchange occurred at a Midtown coffee shop at 47th Street and 8th Ave.
The FBI claimed the two were corresponding via a secret online network.
Last week, an undercover agent pretending to be a Russian official arranged a meeting to talk about the weekly laptop exchanges, pretending to be ready to send the sexy spy on a mission to deliver a fake passport to another female agent, according to the federal complaint.
"Are you ready for this step?" he asked. "S¤-¤-¤-, yes," Chapman allegedly gushed.
The undercover instructed her on how she would recognize her fellow spy and how to report back on the handoff, the feds said.
"Haven’t we met in California last summer?" the spy expecting the fake passport was supposed to say. Chapman was to respond, "No, I think it was the Hamptons," according to the FBI.
Chapman allegedly was also supposed to hold a magazine under her arm so her counterpart would recognize her, and plant a stamp on a wall map indicate the handoff was a success.
It never took place.
Another spy-movie-like maneuver took place in Brooklyn shortly after the meeting with the undercover agent when Chapman darted into a Verizon phone store to buy a cell using the name Irine Kutsov, and an address of "99 Fake Street," the feds said. She only planned to use the phone to "avoid detection of her conversations," the FBI alleged.
At her arraignment last night, she was held without bail as federal prosecutor Michael Farbiarz called her a "highly trained agent" and a "practiced deceiver."
The other suspects, including four middle-aged couples living seemingly ordinary professional lives, were supplied with bogus names and documents and told by Moscow to become "Americanized," infiltrate "policymaking circles" in the United States and send secrets back to the Kremlin, the feds said.
All allegedly were on deep-cover assignments and schooled in spying tradecraft — from using high-tech methods like digital gadgets to traditional methods like invisible ink, sending encoded radio bursts of data and using innocent-looking "brush-by" encounters to pass documents.
Among the extraordinary allegations detailed in documents filed in Manhattan federal court yesterday:
* A senior Russian spy who used the name Christopher Metsos served as a go-between for agents across the country. He buried cash under five inches of dirt in upstate Wurtsboro that was dug up two years later by a Yonkers couple who were members of the ring.
* Metsos turned over an orange bag of cash to a Russian government official in May 2004 when they passed one another on a stairway at the Forest Hills, Queens, LIRR stop.
Other handovers and meetings between spies occurred in a Fort Greene, Brooklyn, coffee shop, a Sunnyside, Queens, restaurant and a subway entrance at Columbus Circle, the feds said.
* In May 2006, spies based in Boston gave their handlers information about changes at the CIA and about the 2008 presidential election. The information came from a well-connected "former legislative counsel for the US Congress," they told Moscow.
* The Boston spies also boasted in 2004 that one of their agents had talks with a US nuclear expert about research on bunker-buster warheads.
* A spy in Montclair, NJ, who used the name Cynthia Murphy, told Moscow in February 2009 that she had "several work-related personal meetings" with a prominent New York financier, who was a big campaign fund-raiser and friend of a former Cabinet member.
"Of course, he is a very interesting target," Moscow replied.
* Her husband, who used the name Richard Murphy, was told last January how he would be able to identify another spy when he traveled to Rome to get a bogus Irish passport.
"Excuse me, could we have met in Malta in 1999?" he was told to ask.
If the contact was legitimate, he would reply, "Yes, indeed I was in La Valetta, but in 2000."
But if his contact was carrying a copy of Time magazine in his left hand, it was a signal that the meeting was in danger, according to the instructions from Moscow.
"You were sent to USA for long-term service trip," one message said. "Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and [send] intels."
The court documents also reveal day-to-day travails of the spy business.
Last March, two of the suspects were watched as they met at a payphone at DeKalb and Vanderbilt avenues in Brooklyn. They went from there to a coffee house for a long chat. One alleged agent complained about the computer Moscow had given him.
"They don’t understand what we go through over here," he kvetched.
Before they left, one spy gave the other a package believed to contain cash, the feds said.
Moscow Center, the infamous headquarters of Russian intelligence going back decades, closely monitored how much it was spending. In one message, it listed all the expenses for two Boston spies, including $8,500 for rent, $160 for telephone and $180 for a car lease.
The Yonkers spies, meanwhile, struggled financially, and after one of them flew to an unidentified South American country to collect eight bags each packed with $10,000, he used some of it to pay off nearly $8,000 in back taxes to the country and city, the FBI said.
Neighbors of the suspects were stunned.
The two Montclair "Murphys" moved to the neighborhood about a year ago and were described by one neighbor as very normal. "They were suburbia personified," he said. Near the crowded, book-filled Yonkers home of suspect Vicky Pelaez — an op-ed columnist for El Diario — and another defendant, Juan Lazaro, neighbors were stunned.
One, Ellen Shaffren, said that the couple had lived there 12 to 15 years and that one of their two sons is a piano prodigy.
Shaffren said Lazaro was an economics professor.
Two other defendants, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, were arrested at their residence in Arlington, Va.
Mikhail Semenko, was busted Sunday at his home in Arlington.
Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, were arrested at their Boston residence Sunday.
Outside their home near Harvard Square, local residents said the couple never quite fit in the offbeat neighborhood.
"There was no interaction," said neighbor Lila Hexner. "Everything was very nondescript."
Metsos, who apparently was able to enter the United States repeatedly over several year, is not in custody.
Each of the 10 arrested was charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison on conviction.
Nine were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum 20 years in prison.
Additional reporting by Perry Chiaramonte, Erin Calabrese, Rebecca Rosenberg and Doug Montero in New York and Marcia Harrison in Boston
After being assured that help was, indeed, on its way, I spent the majority of the afternoon standing over my rather soggy mattress with an industrial strength hairdryer trying to stave off mold and general mattress funky-ness.