Anna Chapman, a glamorous Russian spy, lived a VIP lifestyle in London and New York before being exposed by the FBI. She was secretly working for the SVR, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, while dating and partying in elite circles. Arrested in June 2010, she was sent back to Russia just 12 days later in a historic spy swap, and her British citizenship was later revoked.
Early Life and Move to London
Born Anna Vasil'yevna Kushchenko on February 23, 1982, in Volgograd, Russia, she was the daughter of a senior KGB official and a maths teacher. In 2001, she met British citizen Alex Chapman at an underground rave in London. They married shortly after, allowing her to obtain a British passport and dual Russian-British citizenship.
During her time in London, she worked in finance, cultivating the image of a wealthy, ambitious young professional as she attended exclusive dinners and parties in Mayfair. The marriage ended in divorce in 2006, but she kept his surname and her British passport, which proved crucial for her true mission serving the Kremlin.
Manhattan and the VIP Lifestyle
Chapman moved to New York City in 2009 at the age of 27 and set up a property business. She briefly dated a wealthy restaurant owner from New Jersey named Michel Bittan and became a fixture in Manhattan's elite social scene. Wearing expensive designer clothing, she was spotted in VIP sections of hotspots like Juliet Supperclub and Greenhouse, where billionaires, A-list celebrities, and Wall Street executives partied.
One photograph showed her with economist Nouriel Roubini, nicknamed 'Dr. Doom' for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, after meeting him at a New York event. A high-end nightclub owner later told how she would position herself in areas where the wealthiest members sat, appearing eager to make connections and expand her social circle.
Secret Communications and Operation Ghost Stories
Behind the glamour, Chapman was part of the Illegals Programme, a network of sleeper agents under the instruction of Russia's intelligence services. Her mission was to infiltrate political, financial, and elite circles to gather intelligence and build networks that could eventually be used to influence US foreign policy.
To send information back to Moscow, she would set up her laptop inside a Barnes and Noble bookshop café, while a Russian handler parked nearby, usually in a van out on the street. The two computers connected over an ad-hoc wireless network, which was used to send encrypted messages. She was also tracked wandering through the Macy's department store transmitting coded messages while trying on hats and leggings.
The FBI had been monitoring Russia's Illegals Programme in a massive counterintelligence investigation named Operation Ghost Stories. Chapman appeared on a list provided by a Russian defector named Colonel Alexander Poteyev, and the FBI said its agents began tracking her as soon as she set up in New York. They intercepted the wireless communications between Chapman and her handler and successfully broke the encrypted code. When Chapman started experiencing technical difficulties with the ad-hoc connection, the FBI said it deliberately hacked her computer to worsen the technical problems. They then sent in an undercover FBI agent, posing as a Russian handler named Roman, who contacted her and offered to help fix her laptop.
She bought a burner phone after growing suspicious of the new 'handler' and rang her father in Russia for advice. He told her to hand in a fake passport at a local police station to test if it was a setup. When she did this, the FBI moved in and arrested her, along with nine other sleeper agents.
The Historic Spy Swap and Aftermath
Chapman was arrested on June 27, 2010, and a few days later pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. She was held in federal custody for just 12 days before she and the nine other arrested agents were flown to Vienna, where one of the largest spy swaps since the Cold War took place. In the swap, 10 Russian agents were exchanged for four Western spies imprisoned in Russia, among them Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who had spied for Britain and would later become the target of the 2018 Novichok poisoning in Salisbury.
The British government officially revoked Chapman's British citizenship upon her release. Chapman and the other agents were given a hero's welcome by Vladimir Putin, who claimed he sang patriotic songs with them in a special evening reception. She embraced her newfound fame on her return to Russia, working as a television presenter, a runway model, and a businesswoman. Now aged 44, she even launched her own fashion line and became a leader in the youth wing of Putin's United Russia political party, while her career as a pro-Kremlin influencer means she remains a high-profile figure in Moscow to this day.
The first episode of the two-part series Spy Next Door: The Anna Chapman Story airs tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm.
