A modern day Bond girl?

Sitting in the window of a Starbucks one Wednesday in January, Anna Chapman looked like any other attractive young professional in the canyons of midtown Manhattan, toting a laptop and sipping an overpriced beverage.

But while other latte-drinkers might have been polishing their résumés or perusing the Internet, Ms. Chapman was allegedly engaged in a piece of high-tech espionage. Using her laptop, she passed information over a private wireless network to a computer in a minivan circling nearby, according to U.S. authorities, in a virtual rendezvous that would be repeated on successive Wednesdays.

If the spy scandal now rocking the United States sometimes feels like a plot out of an Ian Fleming novel, then Ms. Chapman, 28, has emerged as its very own modern-day Bond girl.

Visitors to her Facebook page see a young woman directing a sultry glance at the camera from her sloping green eyes, a slice of bare shoulder, and a hand adorned with pearly pink nail polish. Other photos show her with flaming red hair wearing a short dress in a similar shade of scarlet.

When asked by an undercover federal agent, posing as a Russian handler, whether she was ready to complete more covert work, her answer was unequivocal. “Shit, of course,” Ms. Chapman said, according to the complaint filed in federal court Monday.

Unlike the other alleged spies for Russia, U.S. authorities believe that Ms. Chapman and another man, Mikhail Semenko, were using their real names, not assumed identities. None of the allegations have been proven.

A call to Ms. Chapman's lawyer to confirm details of her biography wasn't returned, but various reports say the Russian native completed a master's degree in economics at a university in Moscow and was previously married.

In recent years, Ms. Chapman dove into the world of online real estate, working on property websites in Moscow and New York, according to Dan Johnson, the owner of TheMoveChannel.com who met her in London last year.

He remembers her as a friendly go-getter who flitted between Europe and the United States, with phone numbers in New York, London and Moscow at the bottom of her e-mails. On their first meeting, they went for a drink at a bar underneath London's Tower Bridge.

Informed that Ms. Chapman is suspected of spying, Mr. Johnson sounded flabbergasted. “Really? Really?” he asks. “I'm staggered. I wouldn't see it, to be honest.”

Mr. Johnson's professional collaboration with Ms. Chapman – “that's probably not the best word to use,” he says with a laugh – was short-lived. One of her programmers made a technical error, he says, that ended up saddling his firm with extra charges, and they ended the effort earlier this year.

Another business associate of Ms. Chapman's who runs a Web property firm with offices in Johannesburg and London, said simply “Oh my God,” when told of news of Ms. Chapman's arrest, then declined to talk further.

It's unclear exactly when Ms. Chapman began spending time in New York, though unlike the other suspected spies, she does not appear to have been in the country for long. An energetic networker with a taste for tequila, she took to the city like a native. “The moon is amazing tonight in New York,” she wrote on her Facebook page on April 28.

Around that time federal agents observed her in the vicinity of an unnamed Russian government official. On both occasions, they detected the same two Macintosh laptops connected on a private wireless network. In total, agents observed 10 such Wednesday encounters involving Ms. Chapman, according to the complaint.

For Ms. Chapman, the endgame began as world leaders were assembling in Toronto for the Group of 20 summit this past Saturday. That afternoon in Manhattan, she met with the undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian consulate official, who asked her to pass a fake passport to another alleged spy.

The exchange would begin, she was told, with a particular question-and-answer. The person receiving the passport would ask, “Excuse me, but haven't we met in California last summer?” Ms. Chapman would respond, “No, I think it was the Hamptons.” Ms. Chapman didn't show up for the planned meeting.

On Saturday evening, authorities say, Ms. Chapman dumped a bag containing a cellphone agreement with a made-up name and address (Irine Kutsov of 99 Fake Street), a sign that she had purchased a new phone in order to be able to make calls undetected, the complaint alleges.A judge denied Ms. Chapman's petition for bail on Monday. A call to her New York cell number goes straight to a message, where a slightly gravelly female voice asks callers in Russian-accented English to send a text message rather than leave a voice-mail message.