The Illegals Program is a name given by the United States Department of Justice to an alleged network of sleeper agents planted in the U.S. by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (known by its abbreviation in the Russian language as the SVR, short for Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki). The multi-year investigation culminated in June 2010 with the filing of charges and the arrest of 10 suspected spies in the US and an eleventh suspect in Cyprus. Using forged documents, some of the alleged spies were alleged to have assumed the identities of "citizens or legal residents of the countries to which they are deployed" and had enrolled at American universities and joined professional organizations as a means of further infiltrating spies into government circles
Ten of the agents involved were arrested by U.S. authorities in a series of raids in Boston, Montclair, Yonkers, New York and Northern Virginia. The individuals were charged with money laundering and failing to register as agents of a foreign government. No charges were offered that the individuals involved had gained access to classified material, though contacts had been made with a former intelligence official and with a scientist involved in developing bunker buster bombs.
Donald Heathfield and his wife Tracey Lee Ann Foley had a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Heathfield had earned an M.P.A. degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was described as a "joiner". Heathfield claimed to have been the son of a Canadian diplomat and to have studied at a school in the Czech Republic. He was a professional member of the World Future Society, described by the Boston Herald as "a think tank on future technologies that holds conferences featuring top government scientists" Heathfield's wife, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, worked for a real estate firm in Somerville, Massachusetts
Vicky Pelaez, a Peruvian national, and her husband Juan Lazaro were  arrested at their home in Yonkers, New York. Pelaez had been a television reporter in Peru and a columnist at El Diario La Prensa in New York City. Lazaro is a professor of political science, who had claimed to be born in Uruguay, but had acknowledged in FBI surveillance recordings that he had been raised in the former Soviet Union. In her writings, Pelaez was often critical of U.S. policy in Latin America and had supported liberation movements in those countries. 
In 84, she had been kidnapped by the video of their views be broadcast on television in exchange for her release, though a cameraman who was also kidnapped claimed that Pelaez had been a willing participant in the kidnapping. Lazaro wrote a 1990 article for a European publication that spoke "glowingly" of the Shining Path guerrilla movement. U.S. officials reported that on June 27, 2010, Lazaro confessed to being a spy and that "Juan Lazaro" was not his real name, though he declined to give his true identity. He additionally stated he was not originally born in Uruguay, and that Pelaez had delivered letters to Russian authorities on his behalf.
Richard Murphy used a false birth certificate that claimed he had been born in Philadelphia, while his wife said that she had been born in New York City as "Cynthia A. Hopkins". They then purchased a suburban Montclair home for $481,000 in 2008. When they purchased it, the couple argued with their handlers as to who would officially own the house, with the ultimate decision being that it would be owned by "Moscow Center". In 2009, Cynthia Murphy developed contacts in New York City financial circles as a means to obtain details about the global gold market. Cynthia had been trying to cultivate a relationship with Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist who co-chaired Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid, with her handlers telling her to "to try to build up little by little relations".
Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills
However US authorities allege that they had both been spying for Russia in the US since at least 2004. They received specially coded radio transmissions from their high-rise Seattle apartment, and the FBI secretly entered their home where they found random numbers used to decode the "radiograms". In 2006, the FBI photographed them visiting the Wurtsboro, New York area, where they dug up a bundle of cash in a field that a Russian operative had placed there two years earlier. Zottoli visited New York again in 2009, where he evidently received $150,000 in cash and a flash drive from his Russian handler. Under FBI interrogation after their arrest, Mills and Zottoli acknowledged that they were Russian citizens and that their names were pseudonyms, Zottoli saying that his real name is Mikhail Kutzik, while Mills said her actual name was Natalia Pereverzeva. Both had family living in Russia and prosecutors argued that bail be denied under the circumstances.
Mikhail Semenko, a travel agency employee, was arrested at his residence in Arlington, Virginia, a Washington, DC suburb. He is fluent in English, Russian, Mandarin and Spanish. He had worked for the Conference Board in New York City in 2009, and for the past year had worked at the Travel All Russia, an Arlington, Virginia travel agency focused on Russian travel.
Anna Chapman, whose former name is Anya Kushchenko according to US authorities, is a Volgograd native (was born in Ukraine, according to some reports. Her father was employed in the Russian embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. She received her master's in economics degree from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in Moscow. She later worked in London at NetJets, Barclays Bank and allegedly at a few other companies for brief periods. In 2001, at an underground rave party in London's Docklands, she met Alex Chapman, the son of a British business executive, whom she married shortly thereafter in Moscow; they divorced in 2006.
 Her LinkedIn social networking site profile identified herself as CEO of PropertyFinder Ltd, a website selling real estate internationally. The 28-year old had a network of other operatives until an undercover FBI agent attempted to lure her into an elaborate trap at a Manhattan coffee shop. She was caught at a Starbucks accepting a fake US passport from the agent, who hoped she would forward it to another Russian spy. However, Chapman merely handed the passport in at a local police station.
Christopher Metsos is alleged to be the money man and main go-between  behind the Illegals Program and the SVR. On June 29, 2010, acting on an Interpol notice, Cypriot police arrested the 55-year old man at the Larnaca International Airport as he was about to board a jet for Budapest. He was released after posting 27,000 Euros bail and told to report to a police station thereafter, but skipped out and is thought to have fled the country. (The government of Cyprus is led by the communist Progressive Party of Working People, which has close ties to Russia; the island is considered a common staging ground for spy activities. According to US authorities, Metsos, who traveled with a Canadian passport and claimed to be Canadian, regularly traveled to the US to deliver money to his fellow Russian spies. He would typically drop off money at New York City area locations.
“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”  | You amaze me, that was good reading. |
 | Damn man.....that's good stuff....good stuff! LOL VERY...interesting. Thanks. |
 | The American spies satellites are much more noxious than these Russian amateurs. |
 |  he American spies satellites are much more noxious than these Russian amateurs.  |
| In the biggest spy swap since the Cold War, 10 confessed Russian agents who infiltrated suburban America were ordered deported Thursday in exchange for four people convicted of betraying Moscow to the West. All the defendants stood and raised their right hands in unison to be sworn in before answering a series of questions from the judge, beginning with a request to state their true identities. Their answers were short and scripted, their 10 guilty pleas given one by one in assembly-line precision. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100709/ap_on_re_us/russia_spy_arrests |
| They all got a free ride home. How many more are here and working at Los Alamos or some place like that. I bet Ford has some in GM and GM has some in Chrysler. I personally know one who worked in Caterpillar industries and was paid by Caterpillar for 25 years and he was a spy informant for the US Government watching contracts, performance, QC and such. |
| Mata Hari was an exotic dancer |
| How many more are here and working at Los Alamos or some place like that 'Robin Sage' Profile Duped Military Intelligence, IT Security Pros Social networking experiment of phony female military intelligence profile fooled even the most security-savvy on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter -- and also led to the leakage of sensitive military information Among Robin's social networking accomplishments: She scored connections with people in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIO of the NSA, an intelligence director for the U.S. Marines, a chief of staff for the U.S. House of Representatives, and several Pentagon and DoD employees. The profiles also attracted defense contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Lockheed and other firms made job offers to Robin, some inviting her to dinner to discuss employment prospects. "I was surprised at how people in her same command friended her -- people actually in the same command and the same building," Ryan says. http://www.darkreading.com/insiderthreat/security/privacy/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225702468btw - her facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/robin.sage.641a |
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Hmmmm... many auto accidents in the future....
or, a somewhat less quick death from a rare form of cancer...
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| Mata Hari
Margaretha Geertruida (Grietje) Zelle |
 | Excellent essay and video Good Stuff! I'll have to come back to take in all in. |
 | As the spies return to Russia, Vladimir Putin is laughing through his tears http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewosborn/100046818/as-the-spies-return-to-russia-vladimir-putin-is-laughing-through-his-tears/I believe the spies promised to never ever spy on the Americans again. Has anyone ever thought that the "Russian Spy Ring" was just an attempt to get the convicted American spies out of Russia by using immigrants that had done nothing wrong? Of course no one had heard of the American spys prior to the deal to release them.It was a long planned affair to release the American spys and until they "discovered" the spy ring in the states, Russia had the upper hand. |
| In the biggest spy swap since the Cold War, "The United States has successfully transferred 10 Russian agents to the Russian Federation and the Russian Federation has released four individuals who had been incarcerated in Russia," Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, said in a statement released as the plane landed in Moscow. "The exchange of these individuals ... has been completed." The elaborately choreographed transfer -- which took place while the planes sat on the ground for about an hour -- was reminiscent of a scene from the Cold War. The White House was first briefed in general terms in February by the FBI, the CIA and the Department of Justice about the program and some of the individuals involved, a White House official said. Additional briefings occurred in subsequent months, the official said. President Obama was first briefed on the matter on June 11 and given details of the individuals involved over the past decade. A week later, Obama chaired a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the issue. The idea of a swap was discussed among the administration's national security team before the arrests were made, the official said. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/09/russia.spy.swap/index.html?hpt=T2&fbid=Kx2laLJO_Q2 |
| Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez are very bad people... They are as well as the American spies prisoners are.
To prove how this masquerade was going on I am posting the following.
U.S. says began mulling spy swap as early as June 11
Reuters
July 10, 2010, 8:02 am
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Back when President Barack Obama sat eye-to-eye eating hamburgers with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on June 24, he had a secret.
Obama had been told nearly two weeks earlier -- on June 11 -- about a suspected Russian spy ring operating in the United States, a White House official said on Friday.
The Russians were arrested on June 27 and the idea of swapping the 10 Russians for alleged spies held by Moscow was raised before the arrests were made.
The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Obama had been given extensive details at the June 11 Oval Office meeting about the individuals involved and what they were accused of doing over the past decade.
He was told that some of the Russians had plans to travel abroad this summer.
It was at this meeting that the idea of swapping the Russians came up, well before they were ever arrested. Other options were also discussed.
Obama chaired a meeting of the National Security Council on June 18 to discuss the spy case.
Details on the prelude to the biggest U.S.-Russia spy exchange since the Cold War were released hours after the two countries traded agents on the tarmac at Vienna's airport on Friday.
U.S. law enforcement agencies first briefed White House officials in February about long-running surveillance of the Russians' undercover activities, the official said.
The U.S. government came up with the four individuals to be released by the Russians based on humanitarian concerns, health concerns and other reasons that were put forward to the Russians. CIA Director Leon Panetta led the conversations.
"These names were put to the Russians within days of the arrests," said the official. "And we received a response soon after the names were offered."
The dramatic conclusion to the espionage scandal came after spymasters brokered the deal with the approval of Obama and Medvedev, both keen not to derail improving relations between their countries.
(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Steve Holland; Editing by Paul Simao) |
 | Its apparent from the diagram that there were several separate operations going at once, at least three of them. However, I think that eventually there will be other operations. Its an ongoing thing and while we break the back of this one, there are others we don't see. Just as we, in all likelihood still have operations ongoing in Russia. We keep an eye on each other because we were adversaries in the past and in all likelihood will be again in the future. |
| Whatever their failings, the 10 Russian agents kicked out of the U.S. earlier this month must have done something right to win the adoration of Russia's most famous former spy, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a rare bit of candor about his private affairs, Putin described on Saturday, July 24, how he had personally welcomed the agents home with a pep talk and a patriotic sing-along. But some of his comments left experts scratching their heads. Why was he piling such praise on a group of spies who were, by most accounts, not very good at spying? And what exactly is the bright future he promised them now that they are comfortably back in Russia?
According to two veterans of Russia's foreign-intelligence service, most of the things Putin mentioned, including the serenade to Mother Russia, fit into the process of reintegration that spies normally undergo. When asked by a reporter at Saturday's press conference what the spies would do now, Putin said curtly, "They will work. I'm sure that they will have good jobs, and I'm sure that they will have interesting and bright lives." (See pictures of notorious Russian spies throughout history.)
This could mean different things for different members of the spy ring, says Mikhail Lyubimov, a retired colonel of the KGB and a renowned Cold War spy. The ones who kept a lower profile through the scandal could be given new identities and moved up within the ranks of the secret service, although it is unlikely that they would be sent back into the field, Lyubimov says. But those who have been more conspicuous, like Anna Chapman - who was dubbed the femme fatale of the group after naked photos of her were leaked to the media - should not hold out hope for a career among the warriors of the secret front. |
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Nothing like high praise, a hug, and a kiss as the dagger silently penetrates your back...
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| Anna Fermanova is not a spy like Anna Chapman. she appears to be a smuggler of high end goods. |
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