A 24-year-old woman is under house arrest in Plano after trying to transport three high-tech night vision scopes to Russia without a license. 
 
 Anna Fermanova Anna Fermanova 
 
 Acting on a tip, federal officials searched the luggage of Anna Fermanova at New York’s JFK International Airport on March 1 and found a Raptor night vision weapons sight and two advanced rifle sights stuffed in a pair of UGG boots. 
 
 Officials confiscated the scopes and allowed Fermanova to continue on a flight to Moscow, where she lives with her husband. The scopes are among items on the U.S. Munitions List that require a license from the Department of State before they can be exported. 
 
 Fermanova was arrested earlier this month when she returned to the United States to visit family. 
 
 She is under house arrest at her parents’ home in Plano until her case can be heard in New York. 
 
 National media have dubbed Fermanova “America’s newest sexy Russian spy,” playing off the news of the arrest last month of Anna Chapman and nine others on suspicion of working for a Russian spy ring. 
 
 “She is quite sexy, you could say, but she is not a spy,” said Fermanova’s Addison-based attorney, Scott Palmer. 
 
 And though she was born in Latvia, Fermanova is a U.S. citizen, Palmer said. 
 
 Palmer said she bought the scopes legally online. He said they were for her husband, who wanted them for a friend who is a hunter. ||||| The 24 year-old, who lives near Dallas, was apprehended after attempting to take state-of-the-art night-vision scopes and other restricted items to Russia . 
 
 The items were confiscated when she attempted to board a flight to Moscow earlier this year. She was arrested when returning to America this month. 
 
 The case is being compared to that of Anna Chapman , a suspected Russian spy who was arrested in New York and then returned to Russia under a "spy swap exchange" earlier this month. There is no evidence that the two women knew one another. 
 
 It has been reported that Miss Fermanova was arrested on July 15th for "knowingly and intentionally" attempting to export "defense articles on the United States Munitions list." The night-vision goggles and scopes cannot be exported without approval from the US State Department, as they are considered to be sophisticated military weapons. 
 
 Among the items she was caught with were a Raptor 4X Night Vision Weapons Sight, which she had bought online. A customs agent claimed that the sight's ID numbers "had been covered with black marker pens". 
 
 Miss Fermanova is under house arrest and has had her passport confiscated. She is expected to attend court in New York later this month where she faces up to 10 years in prison. 
 
 Scott Palmer, the woman's lawyer, said that the charges were "false allegations" and "too sensitive to be discussed." It was reported that Ms Fermanova's husband intended to resell the night-vision scopes to hunters. 
 
 Miss Fermanova is thought to split her time between Moscow and Dallas, Texas. She teaches English in the Russian capital. 
 
 According to her Facebook page, she is a 2005 graduate of the Ogle School of Hair Skin and Nails. She holds a cosmetologist licence in Texas. 
 
 She came to America as a child with her parents from Latvia. 
 
 There is growing concern in America over the actions of apparently "cold-war style" spies, several of whom were caught last month living apparently ordinary lives in suburban America. 
 
 Earlier this month, 10 suspected spies including Chapman, pleaded guilty to federal charges and were deported as part of Cold War-style spy exchange. Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, signed a decree pardoning four Russians convicted of spying for the US. ||||| A shadowy money man for a Russian spy ring whose members were assigned a decade or more ago to infiltrate American society was captured overseas, authorities said Tuesday, becoming the last of 11 arrests made over three days in one of the largest such busts in recent years. 
 
 This undated image taken from the Russian social networking website "Odnoklassniki", or Classmates, shows a woman journalists have identified as Anna Chapman, who appeared at a hearing Monday, June 28,... (Associated Press) 
 
 This undated image taken from the Russian social networking website "Odnoklassniki", or Classmates, shows a woman journalists have identified as Anna Chapman, who appeared at a hearing Monday, June 28,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Waldomar Mariscal, son of Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro who were arrested on Sunday on charges of spying for the Russians, speaks to reporters as he arrives home in Yonkers, N.Y., Tuesday, June 29, 2010.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Elizabeth Lapin and her son Blake, 13, are interviewed as their dog Stella rests in the shade Tuesday, June 29, 2010, in Montclair, N.J. The Lapins are neighbors of Richard and Cynthia Murphy who were... (Associated Press) 
 
 This undated image taken from a Facebook page shows a woman journalists have identified as Anna Chapman, who appeared at a hearing Monday, June 28, 2010 in New York federal court. Chapman, along with... (Associated Press) 
 
 The tree-lined neighborhood of Marquette Road in Montclair, N.J., is shown Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Richard and Cynthia Murphy were arrested by the FBI at their house at 31 Marquette Road on Sunday, as... (Associated Press) 
 
 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev speaks to the Cabinet at a meeting, in Moscow's Kremlin, Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Russia angrily denounced the U.S. arrest of 10 alleged Russian spies as an unjustified... (Associated Press) 
 
 The Montclair, N.J. house where "Richard Murphy" and "Cynthia Murphy" were arrested by the FBI on Sunday is shown Monday, June 28, 2010. The couple is among the 10 people the FBI arrested Monday for... (Associated Press) 
 
 An unnamed child rides his bike past 31 Marquette Road, left, in Montclair, N.J., Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Richard and Cynthia Murphy were arrested by the FBI at their house at 31 Marquette Road on Sunday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 The neighborhood of Marquette Road in Montclair, N.J., is seen Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Richard and Cynthia Murphy were arrested by the FBI at their house at 31 Marquette Road, not shown, on Sunday, and... (Associated Press) 
 
 An unnamed woman talks to reporters after taking photos of 31 Marquette Road, left, in Montclair, N.J., Tuesday, June 29, 2010. Richard and Cynthia Murphy were arrested by the FBI at their house at 31... (Associated Press) 
 
 Lulis Leal, of Cedar Grove, N.J., takes photos of 31 Marquette Road in Montclair, N.J., as a television camera stands idol Tuesday, June 29, 2010. The house is where "Richard and Cynthia Murphy" lived... (Associated Press) 
 
 This undated image taken from the Russian social networking website "Odnoklassniki", or Classmates, shows a woman journalists have identified as Anna Chapman, who appeared at a hearing Monday, June 28,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Margo Sokolow is interviewed by the media in front of her home on Marquette Road in Montclair, N.J., on Monday, July 28, 2010. Her neighbors, "Richard Murphy" and "Cynthia Murphy" were arrested by the... (Associated Press) 
 
 Russian officials angrily denounced the arrests as "Cold War-era spy stories," but officials there and at the White House insisted they would do little or nothing to tear recently mending relations between the two nations. 
 
 The FBI moved on the bust because one of the suspects was scheduled to leave the country, the Justice Department said. 
 
 The last suspect, using the name Christopher Metsos and purporting to be a Canadian citizen, was arrested at the Larnaca airport in Cyprus while trying to fly to Budapest, Hungary, police in the Mediterranean island nation said. He was later released on bail. 
 
 Metsos, 54, was among those named in complaints unsealed Monday in federal court in Manhattan. Authorities in Cyprus said he will remain there for one month until extradition proceedings begin. 
 
 Most of the suspects were accused of using fake names and claims of U.S. citizenship while really being Russian. It was unclear how and where they were recruited, but court papers say the operation goes back as far as the 1990s. 
 
 Intelligence on President Barack Obama's foreign policy, particularly toward Russia, appears to have been their top priority, according to prosecutors, who charged each of the 10 arrested in the U.S. with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general. 
 
 The 38-year-old son of one of the arrested couples, Vicky Pelaez and Juan Lazaro, said Tuesday outside their home in Yonkers that he didn't believe the allegations. 
 
 "This looks like an Alfred Hitchcock movie with all this stuff from the 1960s. This is preposterous," Waldomar Mariscal said. Of the charges, he said, "They're all inflated little pieces in the mosaic of unbelievable things." 
 
 Russia's foreign ministry acknowledged Tuesday that those arrested included Russian citizens but insisted they did nothing to hurt U.S. interests. 
 
 The ministry earlier angrily denounced the arrests as an unjustified throwback to the Cold War, and senior lawmakers said some in the U.S. government may be trying to undercut President Barack Obama's warming relations with Moscow. 
 
 "These actions are unfounded and pursue unseemly goals," the ministry said in a statement. "We don't understand the reasons which prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War-era spy stories." 
 
 The timing of the arrests was notable, given the efforts by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to reset U.S.-Russia relations. The two leaders met last week at the White House after Medvedev visited high-tech firms in California's Silicon Valley, and both attended the G-8 and G-20 meetings over the weekend in Canada. 
 
 A member of the Russian Parliament had suggested that elements of the U.S. government opposed to the recent thaw in relations were responsible for the timing of the arrests. But Justice spokesman Dean Boyd noted several critical law enforcement and operational reasons for the timing of the arrests, including one suspect's plans to leave the country. 
 
 Court documents indicate that the FBI believed defendant Anna Chapman, arrested Sunday in Manhattan, was about to go to Moscow, but it was not clear that her impending departure was the one that triggered the arrests. 
 
 Prime Minister Vladimir Putin mentioned the arrests during a meeting at his home with former President Bill Clinton, who was in Moscow to speak at a conference. 
 
 "I understand that back home police are putting people in prison," Putin said. "That's their job. I'm counting on the fact that the positive trend seen in the relationship will not be harmed by these events." 
 
 White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sounded a similar note, saying relations wouldn't take a hit. Obama, who wouldn't comment earlier when questioned by reporters, was "fully and appropriately" informed, Gibbs said. 
 
 Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Farbiarz on Monday called the allegations against the 10 suspects arrested in the U.S. "the tip of the iceberg" of a conspiracy of Russia's intelligence service, the SVR, to collect inside U.S. information. 
 
 Their charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction. Two criminal complaints outlining the charges were filed in U.S. District Court in New York. 
 
 The FBI said it had intercepted a message from SVR's headquarters, Moscow Center, to two of the 10 defendants describing their main mission as "to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US." Intercepted messages showed they were asked to learn about a wide range of topics, including nuclear weapons, U.S. arms control positions, Iran, White House rumors, CIA leadership turnover, the last presidential election, Congress and the political parties, prosecutors said. 
 
 The court papers allege some of the ring's members lived as husband and wife; used invisible ink, coded radio transmissions and encrypted data; and employed Hollywood methods like swapping bags in passing at a train station. 
 
 The court papers also described a new high-tech spy-to-spy communications system used by the defendants: short-range wireless communications between laptop computers _ a modern supplement for the old-style dead drop in a remote area, high-speed burst radio transmission or the hollowed-out nickels used by captured Soviet Col. Rudolf Abel in the 1950s to conceal and deliver microfilm. 
 
 Behind the scenes, they were known as "illegals" _ short for illegal Russian agents _ and were believed to have fake back stories known as "legends." 
 
 In spring 2009, court documents say, conspirators Richard and Cynthia Murphy, who lived in New Jersey, were asked for information about Obama's impending trip to Russia that summer, the U.S. negotiating position on the START arms reduction treaty, Afghanistan and the approach Washington would take in dealing with Iran's suspect nuclear program. They also were asked to send background on U.S. officials traveling with Obama or involved in foreign policy, the documents say. 
 
 "Try to outline their views and most important Obama's goals (sic) which he expects to achieve during summit in July and how does his team plan to do it (arguments, provisions, means of persuasion to 'lure' (Russia) into cooperation in US interests," Moscow asked, according to the documents. 
 
 Moscow wanted reports that "should reflect approaches and ideas of" four unnamed sub-Cabinet U.S. foreign policy officials, they say. 
 
 One intercepted message said Cynthia Murphy "had several work-related personal meetings with" a man the court papers describe as a prominent New York-based financier active in politics. 
 
 In response, Moscow Center described the man as a very interesting target and urged the defendants to "try to build up little by little relations. ... Maybe he can provide" Murphy "with remarks re US foreign policy, 'roumors' about White house internal 'kitchen,' invite her to venues (to major political party HQ in NYC, for instance. ... In short, consider carefully all options in regard" to the financier. 
 
 The Murphys lived as husband and wife in suburban New Jersey, first Hoboken, then Montclair, with Richard Murphy carrying a fake birth certificate saying he was born in Philadelphia, authorities said. 
 
 The complaint says Metsos traveled to the United States to pay Richard Murphy and others using clandestine _ and sometimes bizarre _ methods. 
 
 Metsos was surreptitiously handed the money by a Russian official as the two swapped nearly identical orange bags while passing each other on a staircase at a commuter train station in New York, Metsos said. 
 
 After giving some of the money to one of the defendants, Metsos drove north and stopped his car near upstate Wurtsboro, N.Y. Using data from a global-positioning system that had been secretly installed in his car, agents went to the site and found a partially buried brown beer bottle. They dug down about five inches and discovered a package wrapped in duct tape, which they photographed and then reburied. 
 
 Two years later, video surveillance caught two unnamed secret agents digging up the package. 
 
 On Saturday, an undercover FBI agent in New York and another in Washington, both posing as Russian agents, met with two of the defendants _ Chapman at a New York restaurant and Mikhail Semenko on a Washington street corner blocks from the White House _ prosecutors said. The FBI undercover agents gave each an espionage-related delivery to make. Court papers indicated Semenko made the delivery as instructed but apparently Chapman didn't. 
 
 Aside from the Murphys, three other defendants also appeared in federal court in Manhattan _ Pelaez and Lazaro, who were arrested at their Yonkers, N.Y., residence, and Chapman. 
 
 Pelaez was a reporter and editor for a prominent Spanish-language newspaper videotaped by the FBI contacting a Russian official in 2000 in Latin America, prosecutors said. 
 
 The Murphys, Lazaro, Pelaez and Chapman were held without bail but didn't enter a plea. Another hearing was set for Thursday. 
 
 Pelaez is a Peruvian-born reporter and editor and worked for several years for El Diario/La Prensa, one of the country's best-known Spanish-language newspapers. She is best known for her opinion columns, which often criticize the U.S. government. 
 
 "They were very friendly," said Carmen Marrero, 80, who lived next to Pelaez and Lazaro in Yonkers for years. When a tree from the couple's yard fell on Marrero's property, they took care of it promptly. They once invited him to their young son's piano concert. And they threw parties on the Fourth of July. 
 
 "I never saw anything suspicious," he said. 
 
 Two other defendants, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills, were arrested at their Arlington, Va., residence. Also arrested at an Arlington residence was Semenko. 
 
 Zottoli, Mills and Semenko appeared before U.S. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan on Monday in Alexandria, Va. The hearing was closed because the case had not yet been unsealed in New York. The three did not have attorneys at the hearing, U.S. attorney spokesman Peter Carr said. 
 
 Two defendants, Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, were arrested at their Cambridge, Mass., residence Sunday and appeared briefly in Boston federal court Monday. A detention hearing was set for Thursday. Lawyers could not be found or did not return calls. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Hadjicostis reported from Nicosia, Cyprus. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Pete Yost, Robert Burns and Matt Lee in Washington; Jim Heintz, Lynn Berry and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow; Claudia Torrens in New York; Jim Fitzgerald in Yonkers; Nafeesa Syeed in Arlington, Va.; Samantha Henry in Montclair, N.J.; Russell Contreras in Cambridge, Mass.; and Bob Salsberg and Rodrique Ngowi in Boston.
– A beautician who splits her time between Russia and Texas has emerged as America's latest sexy spy since she was busted for trying to smuggle high-tech night vision scopes to Moscow, according to the FBI. Federal officials acting on a tip confiscated the scopes from Anna Fermanova, 24, at New York's JFK Airport earlier this year. She was arrested this month when trying to return to the US, and is being held under house arrest, the Telegraph reports. Fermanova, a Latvian-born US citizen, has been charged with "knowingly and intentionally" trying to export the items without the necessary State Department approval, and faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted. Her lawyer calls the charges "silly," and says the scopes were for her husband, who planned to sell them to hunters. "She is quite sexy, you could say, but she is not a spy," he tells the Dallas Morning News. Fermanova was arrested just two weeks after femme fatale Anna Chapman was sent back to Russia after the feds busted up her spy ring.