Make room Anna Chapman, there’s a new Russian spy on the block – or to be more specific, a Baltic spy. Latvian immigrant Anna Fermanova, 24, is stealing the hearts of Facebook fans with her good looks and stealing military hardware from the U.S. Fermanova is alleged to have sent a military grade Raptor 4X Night Vision Weapons sight to her husband in Moscow unlawfully, reports the New York Daily News. The blonde import was arrested July 15 at her parents’ home near Dallas after coming back from her most recent Moscow vacation.
'Looks a lot worse than it really is,’ according to Anna Fermanova’s representative
”She’s a nice Jewish girl who lives with her sweet Latvian mother and father. There’s no terrorism link. There’s no espionage,” claims Scott Palmer, Anna Fermanova’s lawyer. But a confidential informant is reported to have tipped off federal immigration agents as to Fermanova’s illicit activities. Federal authorities who stopped Fermanova at Kennedy Airport before she boarded her flight for Moscow found a $ 7,000 Raptor 4X Night Vision Weapons Sight and two other sights worth $ 4,000 apiece.
Fermanova states she’d purchased the scopes online for her “husband’s hunting buddies in Russia,” writes the Daily News. Authorities questioned whether she knew it was illegal to leave the country with military grade hardware without a proper exporter’s license, and Fermanova responded that she’d filled out some paperwork, but was unsure of its purpose. It didn’t happen to be an exporter’s license; that much is clear.
She admits to blacking out the serial numbers
Fermanova said to officials that she’d obscured the serial numbers on the scopes deliberately. Investigating agents didn’t believe Fermanova was telling the whole truth she said that she did that simply for making the serial numbers “less noticeable”. While the authorities did allow Fermanova to go to Moscow without the scopes, they later took her passport and imprisoned her when she returned to America. The charge was “knowingly and intentionally attempting to export defense articles on the United States Munitions list”. That carries a 10-year prison term, indicates the Daily News. Currently, she resides in her parents’ home when under house arrest, after $ 50,000 bail went to post.
She once forged a check
In 2003, Anna Fermanova was arrested for forging a $ 76 check. The one-time cosmetology student and English language instructor was fined for the offense and served three years of probation. During her time in beauty school, Fermanova took numerous provocative photographs of herself that made her Facebook page a popular attraction. This attention is not dissimilar to the ogling Anna Chapman received over her own sexy photographs.
nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/07/28/2010-07-28_nice_jewish_girl_anna_fermanova_busted_for_trying_to_smuggle_nightvision_scopes_.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvia
