By LONDON — The Haydee Guesthouse, with its worn-out carpets and grandmotherly Victorian façade, makes for an unlikely base for Russian-backed high-stakes espionage.
But for years, the guesthouse in Great Yarmouth, a run-down resort town on Britain’s east coast, played host to a freelance spy ring orchestrating cross-continental honeytraps, kidnappings, and murder plots targeting high-profile dissidents and sensitive military sites.
The details, which seem pulled straight from a spy novel, unfolded in British courts last week after three Bulgarians were found guilty of conspiracy to spy — members of a Russian ring operating from their base in the United Kingdom.
Gabriela Gaberova, 30, a beautician tapped to carry out honeytraps; Katrin Ivanova, 33, a lab assistant who was also found guilty of “possessing identity documents with improper intention;” and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, a painter-decorator and Gaberova’s former partner, made up the ragtag group of amateur operatives who managed to carry out espionage operations for the Kremlin on what prosecutors described as being on “an industrial scale.”
Their handler, a fellow Bulgarian named Biser Dzhambazov, called himself “Mad Max” and doubled as a medical courier as well as a knot in the spy ring’s tangled romantic subplot.
Dzhambazov lived with Ivanova before ending their long-term relationship after developing feelings for Gaberova. When police raided the beautician’s northwest London flat in February 2023, they found Dzhambazov and Gaberova in bed together.
Their ringleader was a fifth Bulgarian, Orlin Roussev, part spy, part IT specialist, who adopted the name “Jackie Chan” in messages to his side-kick, Dzhambazov.
Roussev and Dzhambazov both pled guilty to espionage charges following their arrest in 2023. A sixth Bulgarian, a mixed martial arts fighter code name “The Destroyer,” real name Ivan Stoyanov, also admitted spying for Russia.
Meanwhile, Roussev’s ‘minions’ — which he named after the yellow characters from the Despicable Me animated series — denied the charges.
Vanya Gaberova, 30, was found guilty of conspiracy to spy at the Central Criminal Court following a trial.Metropolitan Police
Instead of being part of the cartoon villain Gru’s scheme, these defendants were real-life operatives working for the Russian intelligence service, also named GRU.
From 2020 to 2023, the gang carried out a series of chaotic and often disorganized covert missions, one of which targeted Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist renowned for exposing Russian involvement in the poisoning of MI6 double agent Sergei Skripal with Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, in southern England, in March 2018.
The group tracked his movements across Austria, Montenegro, and Spain, even considering a honeytrap, with Gaberova potentially involved in the scheme.
In 2022, they surveilled Roman Dobrokhotov, a journalist critical of Russia, with discussions of a possible kidnapping. Telegram messages show the group followed him from Budapest to Berlin before losing him at passport control.
In another bizarre plot, the group planned to spray the Kazakh Embassy in London with what Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service described as “large quantities of fake pig’s blood.” They also schemed to create a false opposition group to stage a protest outside the embassy, and feed the sham information about the fake group to Kazakh Intelligence, in order to boost Russia’s image.
The group also tracked Kirill Kachur, a former Russian official, in Montenegro, planning a kidnapping. They surveilled a U.S. military base in Stuttgart, focusing on Ukrainian forces. Additionally, they conducted covert operations against former Kazakh politician Bergey Ryskaliyev, attempting to access his residence and gather intelligence.
Investigators uncovered a trove of over 200,000 messages between the operatives, as well as spy equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, including cameras hidden in pens and ties, and videos showing the group surveilling specific sites of interest.
In addition to espionage, the group was implicated in broader Russian efforts to influence foreign political climates and destabilize rival nations.
Orlin Roussev, 47, Bizer Dzhambazov, 43, and Ivan Stoyanov, 32, previously pleaded guilty to spying offenses. Metropolitan Police
The three defendants will be held in custody until sentencing in May.
Commander Dominic Murphy, head of Scotland Yard’s SO15 which deals with state threats, said it was one of the U.K.’s largest espionage investigations of the last 15 years.
Prosecutors said the group was directed by alleged Russian agent Jan Marsalek, an Austrian national, who had contact with Russian intelligence agencies.
The shadowy former COO of Wirecard, who is wanted Germany and subject to an Interpol red notice, had fled to Russia, where he allegedly ran the Bulgarian network.
Marsalek and Roussev discussed the kidnap and murder of both Grozev and Kirill Kachur, who had worked for the Investigative Committee of Russia until falling out with the Kremlin.
Gaberova, Ivanchev, and Ivanova claimed they didn’t know who they were working for, or that they were lied to by their superiors.
“This prolonged activity also undermined the security and safety of the UK,” the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement, “and there can be no doubt that each of the defendants knew exactly who they were spying for.”
Russia has been linked to numerous covert operations in the U.K. in recent years as part of its broader efforts to undermine Western security and influence global politics.
In 2022, a 55-page report from the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament said the the country is a target for Russian disinformation, and described Russian influence in Britain as “the new normal.”
