Bulgarian national and 46-year-old Russian spy Orlin Rusev compared himself to James Bond character " The British tabloid Daily Mirror writes about this with reference to a court statement..
In a guest house on the coast, he hid a lot of gadgets and secret recording devices. Orlin Rusev told his handler he felt like a character in the James Bond "
Bond hero "
Rusev may have received instructions from his handler, Jan Marsalek, who is wanted after committing an estimated $2 billion tech fraud linked to Wirecard.. Rusev pleaded guilty to running a spy ring for the Russians, but other members of the group deny the charges.
The Old Bailey Central Criminal Court heard that a huge amount of covert surveillance equipment was found at Rusev's address in Great Yarmouth..
More equipment was in the north London guest flat shared by Katrin Ivanova and Bizer Dzambazov, two alleged members of the spy ring..
Among the thousands of items detectives found were a black cap with a hidden camera, a liter plastic Coca-Cola bottle with a waterproof camera behind the label and a surveillance camera. The spy hid the micro SD card in a soft Minion toy in the apartment.
The Haydee Guest House in Great Yarmouth had 33 rooms, three of which contained a significant amount of IT equipment used by Rusev, the Old Bailey prosecutor said..
Law enforcement officers seized 3,540 physical evidence at several addresses, including 1,650 digital evidence. Jurors were shown the Razor II " It was valued at $147,000.
Razor II is made by an unknown manufacturer and can be deployed anywhere. Less technologically advanced, the $50,000 Stealth system was a black box the size of a pencil case that could be carried and hidden under outer clothing..
" It can identify an individual phone by IMSI and IMEI numbers when used with the $18,500 Jugular 4 directional device.
The spies wanted to use all this equipment to tap the phones of Ukrainian soldiers at the US military base in Stuttgart, who were being trained to operate Patriot missile defense batteries.. The information would have allowed them to track where the missiles were being launched from, but the men were arrested in February 2024 and the plan fell through..
Most of the equipment was intended for recording video and audio: wristwatches, pens, ties, sunglasses, lighters, car keychain and jewelry - pendants with a hidden camera and microphone with an SD memory card, earrings with audio recording devices.
Some of them contained SIM cards to communicate and transfer data directly to another member of the spy network.
Let us remind you that a Russian spy with an Israeli passport, Alexander Miroshnichenko, was detained in Kharkov. He identified the locations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kharkov region.
Focus previously wrote about the spy scandal involving Prince Andrew, the younger brother of the British King Charles. The prince was friends with Chinese citizen Yang Tengbo, associated with the PRC government.