This beautiful 29-year-old who thought she was being hired by the government to act as an undercover crimebusting agent is facing a lengthy jail term after she was conned into stealing thousands of pounds worth of jewellery.

Katya Kalugina, alias Agent Cat, had been looking for a job working as a nanny when she was contacted by a supposed government agent from Moscow.

She told cops he said he was looking for good-looking, talented operatives to work undercover as part of a new crimebusting initiative known as the FBK, a special unit to tackle financial and accounting fraud. He wanted to see if she could help him with a gang of counterfeiters faking designer goods.

The young woman said she had instantly agreed, and Agent Cat was given her first assignment, to gain employment in the upmarket Diadem Jewelry Store at the Siberian Mol shopping centre in Novosibirsk in Russia where they believed worthless trinkets were being sold as valuable designer jewellery.

Agent Cat contacted the jewellery store manager, her contact had even given her his name, Alexander, and she was quickly hired where stage two of the operation then swung into action. She was instructed by her handler which pieces of suspected counterfeit jewellery she had to select after the store closed, and it would be collected by an agent who would take it away for testing.

She was told that she would then need to put everything back once he had been tested so as not to arouse suspicions, after which they would then be able to follow the trail of the counterfeiters back to their headquarters.

Katya told cops: “I was worried about making sure I can put anything back in the right place, so even photographed it and got my boyfriend to help me. We were going to put it all back in once it was given to us and we took it out and delivered it to the car in a suitcase and then waited for it to be returned.”

She said when it was not returned, she realised she had made a terrible mistake and eventually turned herself into cops to confess what had happened.

She also provided the photographs of all the things that she’d stolen that she said she had taken at the time with her mobile phone, with the pictures needed to make sure she put them back exactly as she had taken them.

The story has gripped Russia as Katya supported by her boyfriend kept turning up in local newspapers and TV to lament that she was tricked before disappearing again, but were finally caught when she checked into a health spa to try and tackle the effects of the stress.

The owner of the jewellery store who said they robbed him of 5 million rubles (GBP 50,000) worth of gold and diamonds said: “If somebody ordered you to kill someone and you did it, you are still a murderer. It’s the same with this, if you are not guilty, why run away?”

The mother of the woman is convinced of her daughter’s innocence, saying: “There are people who deceived her, who took the jewellery.

“But the police are not looking for them. I even drew a picture of one of the criminals, but the detectives did not show any interest at all. Ekaterina drunk a cafe with the contact before the robbery and he paid with a bank card.

“So it must be possible to find out whose name is on that card? They could start the search there.”

However, cops have so far not attempted to follow this line of enquiry or acted on the woman’s claims.

The girl’s lawyer has admitted that the young woman has some responsibility, but it happened out of stupidity.

He said: “My client believed the criminal. She even photographed the goods before taking them out – she was convinced that everything would need to be returned to its original place until morning.

“So she did not commit theft, as the investigation insists on, but inflicted property damage through abuse of trust.

“Kalugina had no direct intent to steal. This is a different criminal article and a different punishment.”

The investigation is ongoing.