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I can't add much to this crazy story than what @EliotHiggins and @AricToler already posted. However, I'll answer a few questions on how we actually stumbled on this spy in the first place, and what different tricks we used over 10 months to find her real identity.
We first noticed her thanks to a super useful database shared with us by @cpartisans: the border crossing records of Belarus. We knew the passport ranges of GRU and FSB spies, so we decided to search in that data-set by partial matches, leaving the last 3 digits out as wildcards.
One number I tried was that of "Ruslan Boshirov", one of the Salisbury spire-watchers. His passport number was 643258090. I got quite a few other spies in the same range, but suddenly I noticed a long Spanish-sounding name: Maria Adela Rivera Kuhfeldt. 13 whole trips!!
(by the way, "Boshirov" himself was also in the database, for some name his name was spelled "Poshirov" - never figured out if the Belarusians had tried to disguise him one more time, after our publications about him. Or they were just sloppy).
"Maria Adela" stood out big time with her non-Russian name. Was she an innocent foreigner who had acquired Russian citizenship and accidentally gotten a number from that range? Some things spoke against her being a spy. For example, 13 super-long train trips? Spies prefer to fly.
A simple Google search of her name gave two intriguing hits. One was a jewellery brand registration in France from 2012. The other one was a criminal referral for an "unknown person who claimed her name was Maria Adela Rivera Kuhfeldt" (Yes, i have visited that page MANY times)
Then @Dobrokhotov and I found a person with a very similar name had been secretary of a charity in Naples. We reached out to @florianabulfon - and she exclaimed: 1. That's right next to the @NATO Command Center. And 2. All the others are NATO officers.
@Dobrokhotov @florianabulfon @NATO (Btw, to answer some proposed hypotheses - no, she didn't have a cat yet when she took the train rides - her cat is coming up later in the story, BIG TIME).
@Dobrokhotov @florianabulfon @NATO Based on her social media accounts (we found her FB and Insta), her M.O. was not hard to reconstruct. She had been "the life of the party", and had sought to make as many friends within NATO circles as possible. And seemed to have succeeded.
But what about the cat, many ask. What was Luisa's role? Was that even her real name? Well, built a full-fledged cat dossier for Luisa. Our hope was to find her owner's identity via her cat - "the only stable thing in her life".
@Jesus_Comedy One was published on the internet on 2006. The other one we got it based on a request now
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