(NECN: Jennifer Eagan - Cambridge, Mass.) - A Cambridge, Massachusetts couple charged with spying for the Russian government.
They're among 10 people arrested from Massachusetts to Virginia.
The alleged spies are accused of using fake documents and burying thousands of dollars in cash underground.
NECN reporter Jennifer Eagan is in Cambridge with more on the story.
It includes allegations of fake ids, forged birth certificates and false travel documents.
Also tens of thousands in cash reportedly sent from Russia, then buried in the ground in New York, caught on surveillance video.
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And in Cambridge, alleged spies blending in, living in a townhouse on Trowbridge Street.
In federal court in Boston, they were referred to only as defendants #4 and #5 - charged as Russian spies in a nationwide round-up of 10 deep cover agents living in the United States.
Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley are not their real names according to court documents - but this married couple claims to have been born in Canada, then lived as naturalized citizens in the US since 1999 at this townhouse on Trowbridge Street in Harvard Square in Cambridge where they were arrested Sunday night, computer discs seized.
Here they didn't stand out and that appears to have been the point.
Neighbors knew them as just another Cambridge family.
"Nothing strange," said neighbor Montse Monne-Corbero. "They have two kids, two boys. Yes. And now they are teenagers. They cleaned (up) when we had the snow. They were very nice, very helpful.
"My grandchildren think it's exciting that we're living across the street from spies," said neighbor Vicky Steinitz.
The FBI says this is part of an elaborate network and a ten year investigation that led to arrests in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts.
Heathfield and Foley were charged in Boston - four co-conspirators in New York with conspiracy to act as unregistered agents of a foreign government and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Heathfield allegedly met with US officials about nuclear weapons research.
Foley allegedly used secret communications methods - encoding data with steganography and sending radiograms to contact Russia.
Court papers say "a Boston Conspirators' Electronic Message to Moscow Center from in or about May 2006, focused on turnover at the head of the CIA and the 2008 U.S. presidential election."
And why are they here?
The FBI intercepted a message sent by the Russian Federation in Moscow last year saying, "You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. - all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels to C ."
"The Soviet Union is long since gone. And I'm just, I'm surprised, for sure, but I'm not alarmed," Steinitz said.
Court observers told us Heathfield was upbeat in the brief hearing today and that Foley was upset.
They declined to go to New York for a detention hearing and will have one in Boston Thursday at noon.
