Anna Chapman (PICTURES): Who is the Russian "Femme Fatale"?
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Who is Anna Chapman?
She's been dubbed the femme fatale of an alleged Russian spy ring. It's a case with Cold War-style intrigue - and she's a striking redhead and self-styled entrepreneur who dabbled in real estate and posted "if you can dream, you can become it" on her Facebook page.
But U.S. authorities say Chapman's American dream was a ruse.
Officials say the 28-year-old was a savvy Russian secret agent who worked with a network of other operatives before an undercover FBI agent lured her into an elaborate trap at a coffee shop in lower Manhattan.
The U.S. has branded the operatives as living covertly, but Chapman took care to brand herself publicly as a striver of the digital age, passionately embracing online social networking by posting information and images of herself for the world to see.
Chapman took an apartment a block from Wall Street and began using online social networks, including LinkedIn and Facebook, to develop business contacts and to market her skills. On her LinkedIn page, Chapman is listed as the chief executive officer of PropertyFinder Ltd., which maintains a website featuring real estate listings in Moscow, Spain, Bulgaria and other countries.
She lists previous jobs at an investment company and a hedge fund in London. The summary also says she earned a master's degree in economics at a Russian university in 2005.
Her Internet footprints also include a photo of her posing with a glass of wine between two men at the Global Technology Symposium at Stanford University in March - it cost more than $1,000 to attend - and video clips of her speaking in Russian about the economic opportunities in her new home.
An acquaintance, David Hartman, owner of a New York real estate company, described Chapman as "pleasant, very professional, friendly."
"There's nothing too crazy about her that I knew of," he said.
Prosecutors have charged Chapman and 10 other suspects with following orders from Russian intelligence to become "Americanized" enough to infiltrate "policymaking circles" and feed information back to Moscow.
The FBI finally moved in to break up the ring because one of the suspects - apparently Chapman, who was bound for Moscow, according to court papers - was going to leave the country, the Department of Justice said Tuesday.
