How Bulgarian gang used James Bond-style spyware

Counterterrorism services reveal gadgets used to collect intelligence for Russians from spy ties’ to Coke cameras

- HOLLY EVANS

Using spy ties”, cameras hidden inside Coke bottles and more than 200 mobile phones, a UK-based espionage ring would soon emerge as the focus of the largest spying investigation” for British counterterrorism services.

Over the course of three years, five Bulgarian individuals, assisted by a host of others, carried out sophisticated surveillance on British soil and fed secrets back to their Russian handler, former Wirecard chief operating officer Jan Marsalek.

Describing the scale of the investigation as “unbelievable”, the Met Police said the group had accumulated 33 audio devices, 55 visual recording devices, 221 mobile phones, 495 SIM cards and 11 drones, as well as 75 passports and 91 bank cards under various names.

But perhaps even more fascinating was the incredible array of spyware this seemingly unassuming group had access to. A false rock containing a camera, transmitters, surveillance devices hidden within a pen, adapted watches and two “spy ties” were among the advanced spy gear found during a raid at the Great Yarmouth home of Orlin Roussev, one of the group’s two ringleaders.

Little is known about the defendants’ backgrounds, apart from the fact that Roussev was “highly technically skilled” and had mastered forging fake-ID documents and hacking devices.

He had even bragged in his messages to Marsalek that he was becoming like the James Bond character “Q”, and described his room of spy gear as his “Indiana Jones warehouse”. He appeared startled when police officers in balaclavas barged into his rooms and initially claimed they had got the “wrong place”, before relenting once they showed a search warrant.