- Jan 17, 2017
- 17,887
- 30,073
How a deep cover Russian Spy who was targeting USA / NATO was uncovered
How I Caught A Spy Using Her Cat
The Christo Files
Feb 26, 2026
In 2018, a young woman boarded a plane from Naples to Moscow and completely vanished. Known to her friends in Naples as Maria Adela Kufheld Rivera, the woman left without saying any goodbyes. She never returned to move out of her apartment. Stopped replying to her friend's messages. Left a cryptic post on Facebook implying she is going in for cancer treatment and might be back in touch one day. But she never did.
A day before she left, investigative journalist Christo Grozev and his team had published a key finding related to their investigation into the Skripal poisonings: the Russian GRU operatives involved in the case had been issued passports with nearly consecutive numbers. This was a major breakthrough for the team—it allowed them to identify a whole range of passport numbers they could credibly suspect belonged to Russian operatives. After these revelations were made public, dozens of active Russian spies around the world were burned overnight, including “Maria Adela.”
In this episode of The Christo Files, Christo takes you deep inside the first episode of our new series exposing the GRU’s deep-cover "Illegals" spy program – and reveals how a pet cat and the woman's search for love on Tinder allowed Christo to expose her as a Russian spy attempting to access NATO’s most-prized secrets.
You’ll see how Christo’s team at Bellingcat and The Insider exposed a charismatic Peruvian Jewelry Designer as a deep-cover GRU operative, tracing her movements across Europe, exposing the glaring holes in her backstory, and eventually uncovering her real Russian identity and details of her current life in Moscow. And how one investigation uncovered a web of illegal Russian spies across the Globe.
How I Caught A Spy Using Her Cat
The Christo Files
Feb 26, 2026
In 2018, a young woman boarded a plane from Naples to Moscow and completely vanished. Known to her friends in Naples as Maria Adela Kufheld Rivera, the woman left without saying any goodbyes. She never returned to move out of her apartment. Stopped replying to her friend's messages. Left a cryptic post on Facebook implying she is going in for cancer treatment and might be back in touch one day. But she never did.
A day before she left, investigative journalist Christo Grozev and his team had published a key finding related to their investigation into the Skripal poisonings: the Russian GRU operatives involved in the case had been issued passports with nearly consecutive numbers. This was a major breakthrough for the team—it allowed them to identify a whole range of passport numbers they could credibly suspect belonged to Russian operatives. After these revelations were made public, dozens of active Russian spies around the world were burned overnight, including “Maria Adela.”
In this episode of The Christo Files, Christo takes you deep inside the first episode of our new series exposing the GRU’s deep-cover "Illegals" spy program – and reveals how a pet cat and the woman's search for love on Tinder allowed Christo to expose her as a Russian spy attempting to access NATO’s most-prized secrets.
You’ll see how Christo’s team at Bellingcat and The Insider exposed a charismatic Peruvian Jewelry Designer as a deep-cover GRU operative, tracing her movements across Europe, exposing the glaring holes in her backstory, and eventually uncovering her real Russian identity and details of her current life in Moscow. And how one investigation uncovered a web of illegal Russian spies across the Globe.
