The spy network professional#
The spy network series#

Metsos, was detained on June 29, 2010, while attempting to depart from Cyprus for Budapest, but was released on bail and then disappeared. One of the suspects, using the name of Christopher R. No charges were made that the individuals involved gained access to classified material, though contacts were made with a former intelligence official and with a scientist involved in developing bunker buster bombs. They charged the individuals with money laundering and failing to register as agents of a foreign government.

The spy network series#

authorities arrested ten of the agents involved on June 27, 2010, in a series of raids in Boston, Montclair (New Jersey), Yonkers, and Northern Virginia. Vladimir Guriyev was planning to travel to France and possibly Russia, Bezrukov was planning to travel outside the US with his son, and Chapman, in a telephone call to her father the day before the arrest, said she suspected that she may have been discovered and planned to leave for Moscow in mid-July 2010. Īccording to the media reports, planning by the FBI to have the 'illegals' arrested began in mid-June 2010, but the action was hastened reportedly by some members of the group intending to travel outside the US as well as by Anna Chapman's growing concern about having been exposed. military policy, and 'United States policy with regard to the use of the Internet by terrorists'. interpretation of Russian foreign policy, problems with U.S. The Russian agents were tasked by 'Moscow centre' to report about U.S. Messages and materials were passed in such places as Grand Central Terminal and Central Park. passed information back to the SVR by messages hidden inside digital photographs, written in disappearing ink, ad hoc wireless networks, and shortwave radio transmissions, as well as by agents swapping identical bags while passing each other in the stairwell of a train station. The criminal complaints later filed in various federal district courts allege that the Russian agents in the U.S. The court filings allege that couples were arranged in Russia to 'co-habit in the country to which they are assigned', going as far as having children together to help maintain their deep covert status.

Another couple named in court documents were journalist Vicky Peláez and Mikhail Vasenkov (using the alias Juan Lazaro) in Yonkers, New York. Two of the individuals used the names of Richard and Cynthia Murphy and resided in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the mid-1990s, before purchasing a nearby home in suburban Montclair.

The spy network professional#

Using forged documents, some of the spies assumed stolen identities of Americans, enrolled at American universities, and joined professional organizations as a means of further infiltrating government circles. On October 31, 2011, the FBI publicly released several dozen still images, clips from surveillance video, and documents related to its investigation in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The same day, the agents were exchanged for four Russian nationals, three of whom had been convicted and imprisoned by Russia on espionage ( high treason) on behalf of the US and UK. Ten of the agents were flown to Vienna on July 9, 2010, soon after pleading guilty to charges of failing to register as representatives of a foreign government. Moscow court documents made public on June 27, 2011, revealed that another two Russian agents, who Russia alleges were known to the FBI, managed to flee the U.S. A twelfth person, a Russian national who worked for Microsoft, was also apprehended about the same time and deported on July 13, 2010. The suspect arrested in Cyprus skipped bail the day after his arrest.

The ten sleeper agents were charged with 'carrying out long-term, 'deep-cover' assignments in the United States on behalf of the Russian Federation.' The investigation, called Operation Ghost Stories, culminated at the end of June 2010 with the arrest of ten people in the U.S. They were the target of a multi-year investigation by the FBI. Posing as ordinary American citizens, they tried to build contacts with academics, industrialists, and policymakers to gain access to intelligence. by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (known by its Russian abbreviation, SVR), most of them using false identities. The arrested spies were Russian nationals who had been planted in the U.S. An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) culminated in the arrest of ten agents on June 27, 2010, and a prisoner exchange between Russia and the United States on July 9, 2010. The Illegals Program (so named by the United States Department of Justice) was a network of Russian sleeper agents under unofficial cover. Ten Russian agents apprehended on June 27, 2010. For the type of spy called 'Illegals', see Non-official cover and Resident spy. This article is about the Russian spy network in the United States.