Anna Vasilyevna Chapman (born 23 February 1982) was a Russian SVR intelligence agent who was arrested by the United States in 2010 for operating a spy ring in the "Illegals Program". On 8 July 2010, she was deported to Russia as a part of a prisoner swap, and she was stripped of her British citizenship. She went on to become a model and media personality following her release, and she became famous as Russia's "hot spy".
Biography[]
Anna Vasilyevna Kushchyenko was born in Volgograd, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union on 23 February 1982, the daughter of a senior KGB official. In 2001, she met a British citizen, Alex Chapman, at a rave party in London, and they married shortly thereafter in Moscow, and she gained British citizenship. In 2003, she moved to London and worked at NetJets, Barclays, and a few other companies for brief periods. While she was in the UK, she was recruited by the Russian government as an SVR officer, and she was believed to have organized sleeper cells in the country.
Chapman in 2011
In 2006, Chapman divorced her husband, and she moved to New York City in 2009, using her British passport. She moved to 20 Exchange Place, one block away from Wall Street in Manhattan, and she became CEO of PropertyFinder LLC, a website selling real estate internationally; with FSB help, she turned her company from a business struggling with debt to a company with 50 employees. The FBI investigated her spy activities in the USA, which she took part in as a part of the "Illegals Program". She was arrested after being instructed by an FBI informant to deliver a fake passport to another sleeper agent, instead turning in the passport to an NYPD police station. Chapman was deported to Russia on 8 July 2010 as part of a Russia-US prisoner swap, and Britain stripped her of citizenship.
Since her return to Russia, Chapman worked as head of a youth council of the Young Guard of United Russia, worked as a catwalk model in Russian fashion shows, and ran a television series. She used Instagram to voice her political opinions (supporting Donald Trump), and she asked Edward Snowden to marry her on Twitter.