Dmitry Lovetsky, AP
Anna Chapman recently made the cover of the Russian edition of Maxim.
The Full Story: Mother Russia's SVR was running a deep-cover spy ring whose mission was to "search and develop ties in policymaking circles" in the US and send information to the Kremlin's spy headquarters, according to court documents. The Justice Department charged that the spies, including Chapman (her real name), used invisible ink, coded data bursts sent by radio and innocent-looking 'brush' encounters to pass messages in public. They also had false identities and travel documents, the feds said. Chapman's cover was that of an Internet real estate broker. The FBI said she visited the Russian Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan several times and accused her of using her laptop in a coffee shop to communicate via Wi-Fi with Russian agents who sat in vans nearby. She was caught by the FBI only after she agreed to pass a fake passport to another agent. Though she turned the passport over to the New York Police Department instead of passing it on, she was nevertheless busted by the feds and was sent back to Russia along with nine other spies in exhange for four Russian agents who worked for the U.S and Britain.
What's Happened Since? Though she wanted to rebuild her life in England, where she held dual citizenship, her British citizenship was revoked and she has been banned from the United Kingdom. That hasn't stopped her from posing for the cover of the Russian edition of Maxim, wearing lingerie and holding a gun. She also received Russia's highest honor from President Dmitry Medvedev. She is now is an adviser to the president of FondServisBank, a Moscow bank specializing in Russian aerospace industries.
In Her Own Words: The party-loving, high-living Chapman quoted Charles Dickens in her farewell on Facebook, saying that her time in the United States was "the best of times and the worst of times."
Video: Anna Chapman report on "Today"
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