A former nuclear engineer for the Navy's Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, Jonathan Toebbe, was sentenced to 19 years in prison, and his wife Diana was sentenced to 21 years, for selling restricted information about the design of nuclear-powered naval vessels to a foreign nation.
According to the Daily Mail, Judge Gina Groh said the couple's actions were "greedy and self-serving" and put "every citizen of this country in a vulnerable position and at risk of harm from adversaries."
The Annapolis, Maryland spies were arrested in 2021 by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) on charges related to espionage. 44-year-old Jonathan Toebbe and 46-year-old Diana thought they were selling sensitive data to a representative of Brazil, but that figure was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Judge Groh said, "This is an exceptional story, right out of the movie."
According to court documents viewed by the Daily Mail, Jonathan Toebbe, who had top secret security clearance, as well as active Q clearance from the US Department of Energy (DOE), loaded restricted data onto SD cards and concealed them in half a peanut butter sandwich using a sealed Band-Aid wrapper and a chewing gum package. He then left the sandwiches at drop points in West Virginia, south-central Pennsylvania, and eastern Virginia. Diana served as a lookout while he made the drops.
Diana Toebbe’s attorneys argued that she wanted to leave the US because she hated Donald Trump.
A picture of a home they identified as the Toebbe’s prominently featured a Black Lives Matter sign on the front lawn. The organization has been widely criticized for anti-capitalist ideology as well as encouraging the violent anarchist riots across the US in the summer of 2020 and seeking to defund law enforcement agencies across the country.
According to the complaint, on April 1, 2020, Jonathan sent a package to a foreign government with a sample of restricted data and instructions on how to buy more. He continued communicating for several months with someone he thought was a representative of the foreign government and came to an agreement with the undercover FBI agent to sell restricted data in exchange for thousands of dollars in the cryptocurrency Monero.
He allegedly made multiple "dead drops," on June 26 in West Virginia with Diana Toebbe allegedly acting as the lookout, July 31 in south-central Pennsylvania, and August 28 in eastern Virginia, according to the complaint.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe were arrested by the FBI in Jefferson County, West Virginia, in October 2021 after Jonathan had placed another SD card in a pre-arranged "dead drop," according to the criminal complaint.
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