AcesandEights
29-Jun-2010, 01:49 PM
June 29, 2010, 6:43 AM EDT
(Updates with Russian Foreign Ministry in eighth, ninth paragraphs.)
By Bob Van Voris and Patricia Hurtado
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Ten alleged members of a “long- term, deep-cover” Russian spy ring whose ultimate goal was to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles have been arrested, the Justice Department said.
The arrests in the New York area and in Boston and Arlington, Virginia, were the result of an investigation by U.S. authorities into the ring, which began operating in the 1990s, according to two criminal complaints unsealed yesterday.
The alleged ring included agents posing as American and Canadian citizens, some of them living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, with the goal of becoming “Americanized” and passing intelligence back to the Russian Federation, according to the complaints.
The conspiracy involved at least three unnamed Russian government officials, including an official associated with the Russian Mission to the United Nations, the complaints said.
The government charged 11 individuals, including the 10 arrested June 27, with conspiring to act as illegal agents of the Russian Federation within the U.S., according to a Justice Department statement yesterday. One defendant hasn’t yet been arrested. Nine of the defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.
20-Year Sentence
The defendants face as long as 20 years in prison on the money laundering conspiracy charges. The charges of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general carries a prison sentence of as long as five years.
The arrests were announced four days after U.S. President Barack Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House. Obama said June 24 he wanted to move relations between the two countries beyond arms control and security and develop better economic ties with Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said today the U.S. claims are reminiscent of the Cold War and “regrettable” at a time when relations are improving.
“Such actions are completely unfounded and serve unseemly goals,” the ministry said on its website.
Five of the defendants, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Juan Lazaro, Vicky Pelaez and Anna Chapman, 28, appeared before a federal magistrate in Manhattan yesterday.
Court Appearance
Defendants Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills and Mikhail Semenko were scheduled to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday. Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley were set to appear in federal court in Boston yesterday. An 11th defendant, Christopher Metsos, remains at large.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, in Manhattan, ordered the five defendants who appeared before him to be held without bail after a hearing that lasted more than an hour. All of those five defendants, with the exception of Chapman, were ordered to return to court July 1 for a detention hearing.
Ellis also assigned court-appointed lawyers for the five, after they said they were indigent and unable to pay for defense counsel.
Robert Baum, a lawyer for Chapman, asked Ellis to dismiss the conspiracy charge against his client, saying prosecutors had failed to establish their case. Baum said his client faces a maximum five-year term if convicted.
Baum also asked that Chapman be released on $500,000 bond, secured by $250,000 in cash.
Baum argued that when an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, posing undercover as a Russian official, gave Chapman a fake passport, she had turned it over to New York police.
“That is just a reaction of an innocent person,” Baum said.
Tip of Iceberg
Assistant Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said the government executed search warrants around the country, resulting in the collection of more evidence and money. He also said some of the defendants made incriminating statements after their arrests.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg and our case is getting stronger,” Fabiarz told Ellis, as Chapman stood next to him, shaking her head in dissent.
Farbiarz said that Chapman, after meeting with the undercover FBI agent, bought a mobile phone she used to make a flurry of phone calls to Russia, he said. He called her “a sophisticated agent of Russia.”
“She has the ability to take advantage of a global network” of the Russian foreign intelligence agency called “SVR.”
Secret Connection
He said the government has determined Chapman also communicated with a Russian government official using a laptop computer that transmitted data using a secret wireless connection.
“She is a practiced deceiver,” Farbiarz said. “She has the sophistication and ability to run and run successfully.”
Ellis denied Baum’s request to release Chapman on bond.
“The unique circumstances of this is someone who has ties to another country and has the incentive to flee,” he said. “The court finds that there are no bail conditions which can be set.”
Chapman is a Russian national who operates an online real estate business that she estimated was worth $2 million, Baum said after court. He said she has been in the U.S. since 2009. He declined to comment on the charges.
Wiretaps, E-mail
U.S. officials collected evidence on the alleged spies through wiretaps and e-mail monitoring, the use of hidden microphones and video cameras, and secret searches of some of the defendants’ homes, according to the criminal complaints.
It isn’t clear what, if any, secrets the ring is claimed to have passed back to Russian officials. In one case, an alleged agent in Boston discussed so-called nuclear “bunker buster” weapons in 2004 with a government official working on strategic planning related to nuclear weapons development, the government said.
One of the alleged New Jersey conspirators, Cynthia Murphy, had several work-related meetings with a “prominent New York- based financier” whose name is omitted from the complaint. Superiors in Moscow instructed Murphy to work on the relationship and try to obtain foreign policy rumors and invitations to political events, the government said.
‘Develop Ties’
The alleged spies were instructed to remain in place for years to deliver useful intelligence to agents of the Russian Federation, according to the charges. Murphy, and co-defendant Richard Murphy received a coded message in 2009 from the Moscow headquarters of the Russian Federation foreign intelligence service, instructing them on their duties.
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” read the message, decoded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the government. “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 U.S. and send intels (intelligence reports) to C(enter).”
Richard Murphy, 39, has resided in Montclair since 2008, after living in Hoboken, New Jersey; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Queens, New York, according to a computer database.
Farbiarz told Ellis that Murphy had traveled in 2009 to Rome where he met with a Russian official and then traveled, using a fake passport, to Moscow.
“There is also direct evidence of secret global travel,” Farbiarz said.
Feeling ‘Duped’
By using illegal documents, agents assumed false identities before getting university degrees, took jobs and joined professional associations, according to the complaint. Agents also lived together, posing as married couples and having children to deepen their cover, or “legend,” the FBI said.
“We all feel pretty duped,” said Corine Jones, 53, a neighbor of the Murphys in Montclair. “Who would have thought there would be a Russian spy amongst us? It’s just a nice, quiet, middle-class street.”
The Murphys, who moved to Montclair in 2008, have two daughters who walked with their father to the school bus stop each morning, said neighbor Jeanette Lauture, 45.
“We would say ‘good morning’ every morning but he was very private,” Lauture said. “My kids would try to talk to him and he would pretend he didn’t even hear it and walk away.”
Girls ‘Shell Shocked’
After the Murphys were arrested, FBI and police cars lined the street for hours while agents searched the tan house with brown shutters. A green Honda Civic sat in the driveway.
Their girls “got in a van with their pillows looking pretty shell shocked,” Jones said.
Before coming to the U.S., the agents were trained in spy craft, learning foreign languages, the use of encrypted messages and the avoidance of detection of their work, according to the FBI. One method that agents learned was a “brush-pass” or “flash meeting” in which they secretly passed items or payments to another while walking past them in public, according to the FBI.
Prosecutors said federal agents determined the defendants used a process called “steganography,” or messages that are secretly encrypted within electronic images. Federal agents found such encrypted messages on a computer disk recovered from a 2005 search of the New Jersey residence, prosecutors said.
‘Radiograms’
The defendants also made use of “radiograms” in which they used coded bursts of data sent by a radio transmitter that can be picked up by a radio receiver set to a proper frequency. As the messages are transmitted, radiograms sound like the transmission of Morse code, the U.S. said in court papers.
In the criminal complaint filed against Chapman and Semenko, prosecutors said the defendants communicated by the use of “private wireless networks” between laptop computers.
As early as 2001, the FBI was aware that the Russian agents were using false identities, according to the complaints. A 2001 search of defendant Foley’s bank safe deposit box showed that the negatives of photos taken of her in her 20s came from a Soviet film company.
Ellen Shaffren, who lives in Yonkers, New York, across the street from two of the alleged spies, Lazaro and Pelaez, said her quiet residential block has been “teeming” with FBI agents since last night.
“I was totally shocked,” Shaffren said yesterday in a phone interview. “I would never have suspected anything of the sort. They have a teenage son, who is actually a very talented pianist.”
“A neighbor of mine told me he used to leave very, very early in the morning,” she said.
Shaffren said Pelaez wrote columns for El Diario, a Spanish newspaper in New York. An Internet search turned up numerous references to Pelaez at the newspaper. A message left at the newspaper wasn’t immediately returned.
The cases are U.S. v. Metsos; U.S. v. Chapman, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Evil Ned is, as yet, unavailable for comment.
Well, no one posted about it and I know it's not a surprise to most/all of us that governments operate spy rings past the age of the cold war, but this shit was in my backyard and I had to post about it.
(Updates with Russian Foreign Ministry in eighth, ninth paragraphs.)
By Bob Van Voris and Patricia Hurtado
June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Ten alleged members of a “long- term, deep-cover” Russian spy ring whose ultimate goal was to infiltrate U.S. policy-making circles have been arrested, the Justice Department said.
The arrests in the New York area and in Boston and Arlington, Virginia, were the result of an investigation by U.S. authorities into the ring, which began operating in the 1990s, according to two criminal complaints unsealed yesterday.
The alleged ring included agents posing as American and Canadian citizens, some of them living in the U.S. for more than 20 years, with the goal of becoming “Americanized” and passing intelligence back to the Russian Federation, according to the complaints.
The conspiracy involved at least three unnamed Russian government officials, including an official associated with the Russian Mission to the United Nations, the complaints said.
The government charged 11 individuals, including the 10 arrested June 27, with conspiring to act as illegal agents of the Russian Federation within the U.S., according to a Justice Department statement yesterday. One defendant hasn’t yet been arrested. Nine of the defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.
20-Year Sentence
The defendants face as long as 20 years in prison on the money laundering conspiracy charges. The charges of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general carries a prison sentence of as long as five years.
The arrests were announced four days after U.S. President Barack Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House. Obama said June 24 he wanted to move relations between the two countries beyond arms control and security and develop better economic ties with Russia.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said today the U.S. claims are reminiscent of the Cold War and “regrettable” at a time when relations are improving.
“Such actions are completely unfounded and serve unseemly goals,” the ministry said on its website.
Five of the defendants, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Juan Lazaro, Vicky Pelaez and Anna Chapman, 28, appeared before a federal magistrate in Manhattan yesterday.
Court Appearance
Defendants Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills and Mikhail Semenko were scheduled to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, yesterday. Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley were set to appear in federal court in Boston yesterday. An 11th defendant, Christopher Metsos, remains at large.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis, in Manhattan, ordered the five defendants who appeared before him to be held without bail after a hearing that lasted more than an hour. All of those five defendants, with the exception of Chapman, were ordered to return to court July 1 for a detention hearing.
Ellis also assigned court-appointed lawyers for the five, after they said they were indigent and unable to pay for defense counsel.
Robert Baum, a lawyer for Chapman, asked Ellis to dismiss the conspiracy charge against his client, saying prosecutors had failed to establish their case. Baum said his client faces a maximum five-year term if convicted.
Baum also asked that Chapman be released on $500,000 bond, secured by $250,000 in cash.
Baum argued that when an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, posing undercover as a Russian official, gave Chapman a fake passport, she had turned it over to New York police.
“That is just a reaction of an innocent person,” Baum said.
Tip of Iceberg
Assistant Manhattan U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz said the government executed search warrants around the country, resulting in the collection of more evidence and money. He also said some of the defendants made incriminating statements after their arrests.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg and our case is getting stronger,” Fabiarz told Ellis, as Chapman stood next to him, shaking her head in dissent.
Farbiarz said that Chapman, after meeting with the undercover FBI agent, bought a mobile phone she used to make a flurry of phone calls to Russia, he said. He called her “a sophisticated agent of Russia.”
“She has the ability to take advantage of a global network” of the Russian foreign intelligence agency called “SVR.”
Secret Connection
He said the government has determined Chapman also communicated with a Russian government official using a laptop computer that transmitted data using a secret wireless connection.
“She is a practiced deceiver,” Farbiarz said. “She has the sophistication and ability to run and run successfully.”
Ellis denied Baum’s request to release Chapman on bond.
“The unique circumstances of this is someone who has ties to another country and has the incentive to flee,” he said. “The court finds that there are no bail conditions which can be set.”
Chapman is a Russian national who operates an online real estate business that she estimated was worth $2 million, Baum said after court. He said she has been in the U.S. since 2009. He declined to comment on the charges.
Wiretaps, E-mail
U.S. officials collected evidence on the alleged spies through wiretaps and e-mail monitoring, the use of hidden microphones and video cameras, and secret searches of some of the defendants’ homes, according to the criminal complaints.
It isn’t clear what, if any, secrets the ring is claimed to have passed back to Russian officials. In one case, an alleged agent in Boston discussed so-called nuclear “bunker buster” weapons in 2004 with a government official working on strategic planning related to nuclear weapons development, the government said.
One of the alleged New Jersey conspirators, Cynthia Murphy, had several work-related meetings with a “prominent New York- based financier” whose name is omitted from the complaint. Superiors in Moscow instructed Murphy to work on the relationship and try to obtain foreign policy rumors and invitations to political events, the government said.
‘Develop Ties’
The alleged spies were instructed to remain in place for years to deliver useful intelligence to agents of the Russian Federation, according to the charges. Murphy, and co-defendant Richard Murphy received a coded message in 2009 from the Moscow headquarters of the Russian Federation foreign intelligence service, instructing them on their duties.
“You were sent to USA for long-term service trip,” read the message, decoded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the government. “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 U.S. and send intels (intelligence reports) to C(enter).”
Richard Murphy, 39, has resided in Montclair since 2008, after living in Hoboken, New Jersey; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Queens, New York, according to a computer database.
Farbiarz told Ellis that Murphy had traveled in 2009 to Rome where he met with a Russian official and then traveled, using a fake passport, to Moscow.
“There is also direct evidence of secret global travel,” Farbiarz said.
Feeling ‘Duped’
By using illegal documents, agents assumed false identities before getting university degrees, took jobs and joined professional associations, according to the complaint. Agents also lived together, posing as married couples and having children to deepen their cover, or “legend,” the FBI said.
“We all feel pretty duped,” said Corine Jones, 53, a neighbor of the Murphys in Montclair. “Who would have thought there would be a Russian spy amongst us? It’s just a nice, quiet, middle-class street.”
The Murphys, who moved to Montclair in 2008, have two daughters who walked with their father to the school bus stop each morning, said neighbor Jeanette Lauture, 45.
“We would say ‘good morning’ every morning but he was very private,” Lauture said. “My kids would try to talk to him and he would pretend he didn’t even hear it and walk away.”
Girls ‘Shell Shocked’
After the Murphys were arrested, FBI and police cars lined the street for hours while agents searched the tan house with brown shutters. A green Honda Civic sat in the driveway.
Their girls “got in a van with their pillows looking pretty shell shocked,” Jones said.
Before coming to the U.S., the agents were trained in spy craft, learning foreign languages, the use of encrypted messages and the avoidance of detection of their work, according to the FBI. One method that agents learned was a “brush-pass” or “flash meeting” in which they secretly passed items or payments to another while walking past them in public, according to the FBI.
Prosecutors said federal agents determined the defendants used a process called “steganography,” or messages that are secretly encrypted within electronic images. Federal agents found such encrypted messages on a computer disk recovered from a 2005 search of the New Jersey residence, prosecutors said.
‘Radiograms’
The defendants also made use of “radiograms” in which they used coded bursts of data sent by a radio transmitter that can be picked up by a radio receiver set to a proper frequency. As the messages are transmitted, radiograms sound like the transmission of Morse code, the U.S. said in court papers.
In the criminal complaint filed against Chapman and Semenko, prosecutors said the defendants communicated by the use of “private wireless networks” between laptop computers.
As early as 2001, the FBI was aware that the Russian agents were using false identities, according to the complaints. A 2001 search of defendant Foley’s bank safe deposit box showed that the negatives of photos taken of her in her 20s came from a Soviet film company.
Ellen Shaffren, who lives in Yonkers, New York, across the street from two of the alleged spies, Lazaro and Pelaez, said her quiet residential block has been “teeming” with FBI agents since last night.
“I was totally shocked,” Shaffren said yesterday in a phone interview. “I would never have suspected anything of the sort. They have a teenage son, who is actually a very talented pianist.”
“A neighbor of mine told me he used to leave very, very early in the morning,” she said.
Shaffren said Pelaez wrote columns for El Diario, a Spanish newspaper in New York. An Internet search turned up numerous references to Pelaez at the newspaper. A message left at the newspaper wasn’t immediately returned.
The cases are U.S. v. Metsos; U.S. v. Chapman, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
Evil Ned is, as yet, unavailable for comment.
Well, no one posted about it and I know it's not a surprise to most/all of us that governments operate spy rings past the age of the cold war, but this shit was in my backyard and I had to post about it.