Spies in the Garden State.
In the tony town of Montclair, New Jersey, the neighbors knew them as Richard and Cynthia Murphy, a working suburban couple with two young children. He claimed to be from Philadelphia, and she claimed to be a native New Yorker. Apparently, each of their identities is a carefully constructed persona to permit them to be part of a deep cover Russian spy operation.
The FBI arrested the couple on Sunday night, along with four other couples living in various cities in the United States. According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, they communicated with Russia by encrypting messages into websites and sending coded bursts of data via short wave radio transmitter. When Mrs. “Murphy†wasn’t sending encrypted messages to Russia, she was knocking down $135,000 per year as a financial analyst. Pretty good country, what?
If there is any good news, it’s that, they probably had to pony up somewhere around $15,000 per year in real estate tax for the privilege of living in Montclair, a bastion of liberalism, which no doubt helped them fit in.
The dirty little secret is that the Ruskies are quite possibly deeply embedded in thousands of little banks across our country. Money laundering for the Mafia and the Motherland.
Could be fun to ask your local sherrif’s office what their financial crimes division knows.
Comment by Joan of Argghh! — June 29, 2010 @ 10:28 pm
With what they (and the other “suspects) were making off their covers, gotta wonder why they bothered reporting back…
Comment by Dave Merriman — June 29, 2010 @ 11:16 pm
Considering that they were mostly involved in sending financial data back to Mother Russia and considering the current state of the US economy, perhaps the FBI should have let them just continue unabated… Maybe I’ve been wrong about Teh iWon all along – he’s secretly defeating the Russian empire by crippling our own economy and feeding that info back to Russia via their spy network… nah, he’s not that bright.
Comment by gregor — June 30, 2010 @ 8:50 am
Tip of the iceberg.
Comment by Yabu — June 30, 2010 @ 10:02 am
Ya gotta think if they are in NJ they are everywhere! Heh. I’m just surprised anyone in the government was actually watching for this – I think that shocked me more than anything.
Comment by Teresa — June 30, 2010 @ 11:21 am
What I’d like to know is why someone who can make $135K in the financial industry would bother to risk messing around with the Russians. More should come out soon.
Comment by Carl Brannen — July 1, 2010 @ 1:09 am
They needed deep cover to hide in Montclair? Wha?
Comment by nightfly — July 1, 2010 @ 11:07 am