Couple Get 40 Years for Navy Espionage Plot

A Maryland couple have been sentenced to a mixed 494 months driving bars just after making an attempt to provide designs for the US navy’s nuclear-powered warships to a international electrical power.

Jonathan Toebbe, 44, of Annapolis, was sentenced to around 19 several years in jail even though his wife Diane Toebbe got in excess of 21 a long time right after pleading guilty to the conspiracy in February.

Jonathan Toebbe was a nuclear engineer for the Department of the Navy at the time of his arrest, doing work on nuclear propulsion techniques.

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His “restricted data” security clearance gave him entry to delicate facts associated to military services layout aspects, operating parameters and performance properties of the reactors for nuclear-powered warships, in accordance to the Section of Justice (DoJ).

Soon after sending a “package” to an unnamed overseas federal government that contains a sample of this information and facts and directions on how to buy supplemental intelligence, Toebbe is claimed to have made use of encrypted email to correspond with an personal he believed was a representative of this govt.

In reality, it was an undercover FBI agent, according to the DoJ.

Soon after getting $10,000 in cryptocurrency as a “good faith” payment from the agent, Toebbe shipped an SD card made up of delicate info, bizarrely concealed within a peanut butter sandwich.

The card seemingly containied labeled facts on submarine nuclear reactors.

Just after doing the identical factor two more occasions, Toebbe and his spouse ended up eventually arrested in Oct 2021.

“If not for the exceptional initiatives of FBI brokers, the sensitive knowledge stolen by Mr Toebbe could have ended up in the palms of an adversary of the United States and put the safety of our army and our country at risk,” claimed US attorney William Ihlenfeld II. “The FBI retains American citizens safe from enemies the two foreign and domestic and this case is an outstanding reminder of their essential get the job done.”