7 of the most famous spies

Spies not like us

Real world spies are continually at work, grabbing government top secrets and business trade secrets. Here are seven of the most famous / infamous spies.

Anna Chapman

Anna Chapman is the New York real-estate agent and foreign spy from the Russian Illegals Program whom the FBI arrested in New York City in June 2010 after she got too close to seducing a sitting member of the Obama administration. The U.S. deported her to Russia the very next month as part of a prisoner exchange. She lives in Russia.

Hanjuan Jin

Hanjuan Jin is the software engineer and Chinese spy whom the FBI arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in February 2007 in the throes of smuggling Motorola communications technology trade secrets back to Beijing by plane. She resides in prison.

Evgeny Buryakov

Evgeny Buryakov is the New York banker and Russian spy whom the FBI arrested in the Bronx in January 2015 for recruiting for a local spy ring in New York on behalf of the Kremlin. His deportation to Russia was likely but remains unconfirmed.

Victor Podobnyy & Igor Sporyshev

Victor Podobnyy & Igor Sporyshev are the Russian spies whom the FBI arrested in New York in January 2015 for attempting to recruit college girls into their spy ring. They worked in conjunction with Russian spy, Evgeny Buryakov. The U.S. government returned the two men to Russia in a prisoner exchange.

Mostafa Ahmed Awwad

Mostafa Ahmed Awwad is the Saudi spy whom a federal grand jury indicted in Norfolk, Va., in December 2014 for passing technical data on the nuclear aircraft carrier the Gerald R. Ford to an undercover FBI agent posing as another Saudi spy. Mostafa worked as a naturalized civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy. Mostafa is in prison.

Jeffrey Sterling

Jeffrey Sterling is the one-time member of the CIA whom a federal court found guilty in Washington, D.C. in January 2015 of passing data about Iran’s nuclear program to a U.S. journalist. He is in prison.