Russian spy ring: Shocker reminiscent of Cold War as FBI takes down nest of 'deep cover' agents

Daily News - The Cold War is alive and well - and apparently being waged right here in New York.

The FBI announced Monday it had smoked out a nest of 11 Russian spies who spent decades under "long-term deep cover" - living as ordinary suburbanites with lawns and minivans while gathering information for Moscow.

The amazing charges were laid out in a federal complaint that reads like an old-school John le Carré spy thriller, packed on every page with invisible inks, mysterious meetings and secrets sent by shortwave radio.

Some of the four accused couples, including residents of Montclair, N.J., and Yonkers, even had children together to make their cover more realistic.

"The evidence here is overwhelming. It is simple. It is strong," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz at a hearing in Manhattan.

"This is a Russian agent!" he said, gesturing dramatically at one of the suspects, Anna Chapman, a demure divorced 28-year-old who said she founded an online real estate company worth $2 million.

Ten of the 11 suspects were arrested and held without bail, five of them in New York. The 11th is on the lam.

Beginning as early as 2000, the accused spies were watched meeting on benches in Central Park and Brooklyn, plotting in a Queens restaurant, exchanging computer files wirelessly in a Times Square Starbucks, smoothly switching bags in the Forest Hills, Queens, Long Island Rail Road station and burying money in the ground upstate.

"Excuse me, but did we meet in Bangkok in April last year?" was a code phrase they used to identify one another.

"Pls destroy memo after reading. Be well," read a communication from Moscow.

The federal complaint says "Moscow Center" trained the spies in various ways of secret communication and then sent them here "to become sufficiently Americanized to gather information for Russia."

Based on the information in the court papers, the spies were much better at complaining than spying.

"I'm happy I'm not your handler," accused moneyman Christopher Metsos told suspect Richard Murphy in a Queens restaurant after listening to Murphy whine about the defective spy equipment he'd been supplied. Metsos is at large.

Another suspect, New Jersey college Prof. Juan Lazario, was recorded complaining to his accused spy wife, Vicky Pelaez, an El Diario-La Prensa columnist, that "they say my information is of no value. ... If they don't like what I tell them, too bad!"

Lazario, the feds say, posed as a Uruguayan but was recorded in 2002 telling his wife about his Russian childhood. "We moved to Siberia," he reminisced, "as soon as the war started."

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