Anna Chapman And Other Russian Spies Honored By Russian President
Medvedev gives awards to sexy spy and other Russian agents in sleeper ring.
Oct. 18, 2010 — -- Anna Chapman, the sultry undercover agent who pleaded guilty to spying for Mother Russia this summer, has now been honored by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for her espionage.
In a Kremlin ceremony, Medvedev bestowed high honors on Chapman and the nine other members of a Russian sleeper ring who were arrested in June for spying on America. Many of the spies had lived in the United States under false identities for years.
A Kremlin spokeswoman told reporters Monday that "top state awards were presented" to a number of officers in the SVR – Russia's foreign intelligence service – including the "intelligence agents who worked in the United States and returned to Russia in July."
Red-headed bombshell Chapman, 28, appears to have no intention of slipping into the shadows as the other nine spies have done since their arrival in Moscow.
Since returning to Russia, Chapman has appeared in a sexy photo spread in the Russian men's magazine "Heat," gone clubbing, attended a rocket launch in Kazakhstan in an attention-grabbing red pea-coat, and become an advisor to a Moscow-based bank.
Chapman, born Anya Kushchenko, and her fellow spies all pleaded guilty to espionage in a Manhattan courthouse in July. They were immediately flown to Vienna to be exchanged for prisoners being held by the Soviets for allegedly spying for the U.S. and Britain in the largest U.S.-Russia spy swap since the Cold War.
In September, the men of New York who knew Chapman spoke to Details magazine about their alluring friend.
"She was a seductress," her friend Dennis Hirdt, a Roberto Cavalli model, told Details magazine: "When I first met her, from the get-go: Little hand touches. Whispers. When you're in a loud place it kind of lends itself to getting close to someone and maybe putting a hand on the cheek, or maybe 'by accident' lips rubbing against an earlobe."
On the New York club scene where she was a regular, friends of Chapman told ABC News they thought she was either a billionaire or hooker and described an overly flirtatious femme fatale who frequented the most exclusive bars and restaurants dressed in platform heels and designer duds.
Topless photos of Chapman appeared in newspapers in the U.S. and the U.K, leaked to tabloids by her British ex-husband, whose last name she kept.
American entrepreneurs also capitalized on Chapman's looks and sex appeal after her arrest.
Herobuilders, a doll maker that creates ripped-from-headline action figures, debuted two new foot-tall Anna Chapman figurines, each selling for $29.95 on Herobuilders.com.
Chapman was also a Facebook friend of well-known economist and NYU Stern Business School professor Nouriel Roubini. Roubini, dubbed "Dr. Doom," has been credited with predicting the global economic meltdown and is well-known on the New York nightlife circuit.
When ABC News contacted Roubini about the connection, the former Director of the Office of Policy Development and Review at the U.S. Treasury Department removed Chapman from his friends list.
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Roubini told ABC News that Chapman had "befriended" him on Facebook and that he may have met her socially "on one or two occasions in a large party," but that he had never had a one to one conversation with her.
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