[1]: 120 Yakov Agranov, deputy of the NKVD, known as one of main organizers of Soviet political repressions and Stalinist show trials in 1920s and 1930s, was responsible for sex spy operations among creative-class intelligentsia.
[14] Trapped targets during the Soviet Union period included: The Washington Post reported in 1987 that "most westerners who have spent any length of time in Moscow have their favorite tale of an attempted seduction by a KGB swallow or raven.
[22] Nadezhda Plevitskaya, a former opera singer known as the "Kursk Nightingale" before the Russian Civil War, found herself living without her former luxuries following the Bolshevik Revolution.
"Traveling throughout the white-held areas, she entertained the troops at free concerts, at the same time ingratiating herself with anti-Bolshevik leaders who had long admired the 'Kursk Nightingale.'
Nikolai Skoblin, then a young White cavalry officer and a megalomaniac obsessed with the idea of recreating the "Holy Russia", a mythical land that existed before the time of the Tsars, saw Plevitskaya refuse a blindfold before her execution.
[23]: 37–42 Amy Thorpe Pack was an American who married a senior British diplomat and began extramarital affairs upon finding her marriage passionless.
After a colorless stint of boredom at a posting in Santiago, Chile, Pack separated from her husband and went to New York City in 1941, when William Stephenson, then an MI6 chief of station, contacted her and asked her to infiltrate embassies in Washington, D.C.
The KGB tried to blackmail Courtney into ending his Parliamentary tirades, though he refused; and they circulated the pictures to other members of Parliament and business associates.
[1]: 33–35 Maurice Dejean, the former French ambassador to the Soviet Union, was an old friend with close connections to President De Gaulle, who had a fondness for women.
Krotkov defected in 1963 after a French Air Force attaché, Colonel Louis Guibard, shot himself when the KGB showed him pictures they took of his affair with a Russian woman and presented him with the choice of either exposure or collaboration.
[1]: 36–37 Sir Geoffrey Harrison, British Ambassador to Moscow, was the target of a KGB blackmail attempt in 1968, when they placed an attractive maid named Galya in the diplomatic mission.
[1]: 73 Yuri Nosenko, a Soviet defector to the West, detailed the use of a honey trap when the KGB launched a night operation to raid the Swedish Embassy in Moscow with a twelve-strong crew of safe-pickers and break-in experts.
According to Nosenko, a female KGB seductress lured away the embassy's night watchman, and another agent distracted a guard dog by feeding it meat.
[1]: 172 Former Assistant FBI Director William C. Sullivan, in testimony before the Church Committee on November 1, 1975, stated: "The use of sex is a common practice among intelligence services all over the world.
Beginning with his time as a Dublin, California, city councilor, Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese woman believed to be a clandestine officer of China's Ministry of State Security.
[23]: 151 Most variations of the Black Widow in Marvel Comics are fictional characters depicted as swallows, deliberately based on the Russian program.
James Bond is a fictional character depicted as a raven; his parodical counterpart Austin Powers also uses sexpionage to elicit information.
A 1987 espionage-themed American pornographic film featuring Dana Dylan, Rachel Ashley, and Britt Morgan was titled "Sexpionage".
Throughout the game, she employs flirtation, physical intimacy, and emotional persuasion to gain Snake’s trust while secretly working as a sleeper agent for China.
Her ultimate betrayal—stealing the Philosopher’s Legacy—demonstrates that her seduction was a calculated strategy rather than genuine affection, making her a prime example of the honey trap method in espionage fiction.
The 2021 Indian action espionage thriller streaming television series Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story shows honey trapping by trained and contract based swallows.