By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The redheaded beauty accused of spying for the Russians appeared to be enjoying her life in Manhattan before the FBI arrested her on Monday.
Anna Chapman, a 28-year-old Financial District resident, was one of 11 people picked up by federal authorities in and around Manhattan for their role in an alleged Russian spy ring.
"America is a free country. Over here, it is easy to meet successful people," Anna Chapman, a 28-year-old Financial District resident, gushed in a video interview posted to her Facebook page. "In Moscow, it is practically impossible because you have to be as successful as they are ... here you can meet successful people on the street and go have dinner with them."
"Anything can happen," she added. "If you have something to say and present it to the community, they will listen to you. It all happens pretty easily."
But if prosecutors' version of events is accurate, Chapman was simply a "practiced deceiver," whose true aim was to betray the country she praised.
Russian news outlets reported that her given name is Anya Kuschenko, despite prosecutors' earlier claim that she was the only one of the 11 alleged spies who used her real name, the New York Post reported.
Feds claim she communicated with a Russian agent every Wednesday, sending information from her laptop to a van parked outside Manhattan locations — sometimes the Barnes & Noble on Greenwich and Warren streets in TriBeCa or at a Starbucks near Times Square.
While the details of what she shared have not been reported, a financier who says he met Chapman at more than one Wall Street gathering claimed that she was eager to get close to people in power.
"She always asked what people did for a living or who they were," the acquaintance told the Post. "If she found out they were remotely famous or had a title, she would glom onto them."
Chapman attended an event last month honoring Louis Chenevert, President and CEO of United Technologies, a company that produces aircrafts for the U.S. military, the Post reported. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was also in attendance, according to remarks by Chenevert, which were posted to the United Technologies website.
Chapman's history before moving to America is also not fully known.
Russian media outlets say the accused secret agent grew up in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), the daughter of a Russian diplomat who was assigned to Kenya when Chapman was in the 8th grade, the Post noted.
Chapman reportedly moved to Moscow after high school, eventually receiving her master's degree in economics from Peoples' Friendship University and meeting Vianney Mulliez, 47, a top executive at Auchan, a global supermarket chain, whom she married and then divorced in 2008, according to the paper.
It is believed that she arrived in New York last year.
But if Chapman's mission was to discretely gather information from powerful politicians and businesspeople, then she does not seem to have succeeded.
The attractive divorcee wore such flamboyant outfits that friends and neighbors told the Post that they thought she might be a call girl, and the Wall Streeter who claimed to have schmoozed with Chapman at parties said her explanations of her work were noticeably inconsistent.
"She made up a different story every time," he told the Post.
"The first time, she said she ran a real-estate Web site. Then the next time, she was working on an oil deal."
Chapman faces up to five years in prison if convicted on charges of acting as unregistered foreign agent.
