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The wife of a US Navy engineer pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring with her husband in a plot to sell secret information about nuclear submarines to a foreign country, authorities said.
Diana Toebbe, 46, admitted to acting as the lookout while hubby Jonathan Toebbe left memory cards hidden in items such as a peanut butter sandwich and a packet of gum at three “dead drop” locations over several months in 2021, the Department of Justice said.
Jonathan Toebbe, also 46, pleaded guilty on Monday. The couple was arrested in October by FBI agents following a yearlong sting operation.
According to court documents, Jonathan — a nuclear engineer with top-secret security clearance — sent a package of restricted Navy documents and other materials to an unnamed foreign country in April 2020, along with instructions for how to obtain additional information.
Over the course of several months, Toebbe, with the help of his teacher wife, allegedly peddled additional military secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign official in exchange for $100,000 in cryptocurrency.
Toebbe worked in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program with top-security clearance, giving him access to military-sensitive designs for reactors on nuclear powered warships.
In June 2021, Toebbe left an SD-card containing sensitive information inside of a half of a peanut butter sandwich in exchange for $20,000 in cryptocurrency. In return, he emailed the undercover FBI agent a decryption key for the SD card.
He dead-dropped another SD card, concealed inside of a pack of gum, in exchange for $70,000 in August, the feds said. The couple was busted following the third drop in October. Both had originally pleaded not guilty.
As part of a deal with prosecutors, Diana Toebbe pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to communicate restricted data. She had faced up to life in prison, a fine up to $100,000, and term of supervised release not more than five years. Per her plea deal, she will not serve more than 36 months in federal prison.
Jonathan Toebbe, who pleaded guilty to the same offense, will serve a minimum of 12 and a half years in federal prison as part of his plea agreement, prosecutors said.
“Among the secrets the US government most zealously protects are those related to the design of its nuclear-powered warships,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in a statement. “[Jonathan Toebbe] was entrusted with some of those secrets and instead of guarding them, he betrayed the trust placed in him and conspired to sell them to another country for personal profit.”
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