After Anna Chapman, Another Eastern Bloc Beauty Arrested

(July 28) -- The former Soviet bloc seems to have produced a whole generation of danger-loving beauties named Anna. Less than a month after sultry Russian spy Anna Chapman was shipped back to the motherland, another gorgeous Anna -- this time with the more Slavic surname Fermanova -- has been busted for allegedly trying to smuggle high-tech weapons parts from the U.S. to Moscow.

Federal agents stopped the Latvian-born beautician -- who has U.S. citizenship and lives near Dallas -- as she prepared to board a March 1 flight to the Russian capital at New York's JFK airport. They found a $7,000 Raptor 4X night-vision weapons sight in her suitcase, along with two advanced night-vision sights worth $4,000 each, stuffed inside a pair of Ugg boots, according to court documents.

The 24-year-old blonde told officers she was taking the items to her husband -- who lives in Moscow, where she also teaches English to children. She told them he wanted to resell the scopes to a hunter friend.

When asked by investigators if she'd known that the sights couldn't be exported without a State Department license, she replied that she "signed something about that" when she'd bought them online, but was "not really sure what she was signing." However, authorities said, ID numbers on the scopes had been scratched off or covered with a black marker pen, and she admitted doing this "so they would be less noticeable."

Agents confiscated the sights and let Fermanova fly on to Russia. She was arrested on arrival back in the U.S. on July 15 and charged with "knowingly and intentionally" attempting to export "defense articles on the United States munitions list" -- charges that carry a possible 10-year sentence upon conviction.

Fermanova may share a first name, good looks and a penchant for striking provocative poses in Facebook photos (since taken down, but viewable here) with the 28-year-old Chapman, but her lawyer insists the similarities with the flame-haired spy end there. "She is quite sexy, you could say, but she is not a spy," Fermanova's Dallas attorney, Scott Palmer, told The Dallas Morning News. "The government is not accusing her of being a spy, or having any connection with any spy or terrorist organization. She's just a U.S. citizen who was doing a friend a favor." And while Chapman was a relatively recent arrival in the U.S., Fermanova has lived in America since was 9, according to the paper, when her Jewish parents fled religious persecution in Latvia.

Fermanova, who is described in court papers as being 5-foot-6, 135 pounds, and having a pierced belly button, is under house arrest at her parents' home in Plano, where she is going "stir crazy" her lawyer told the New York Daily News. She is expected to appear in Brooklyn Federal Court later this summer.