Elena Vavilova is a Soviet and Russian illegal intelligence officer, retired colonel of the Foreign Intelligence Service since 2010.
From 1970 to 1980 she studied at school with in-depth study of the German language. In 1985 she graduated from Tomsk State University with a degree in history. Under the name Tracey Lee Ann Foley, together with her husband Andrey Bezrukov (under the name Donald Howard Heathfield), she was part of the Russian network of illegal intelligence officers working in foreign countries for more than 20 years. Since 1999, she lived with her husband and two sons in the Boston suburb of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Graduated from McGill University, lived in France, organized individual wine tours there.
On June 27, 2010, she was arrested in Boston as a result of the betrayal of one of the curators of the resident network, Aleksandr Poteev. Found guilty of conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Among 10 colleagues, she was returned to Russia as part of a bilateral international exchange of imprisoned spies between Russia and the United States.
