U.S Navy engineer pleads guilty to charge of selling nuclear submarines

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U.S Navy engineer pleads guilty to charge of selling nuclear submarines

Feb 15, 2022: According to a report by AFP, a U.S Navy engineer admitted in federal court on Monday that he tried to sell secrets about nuclear submarines to a foreign power, according to a statement by the Justice Department.

Jonathan Toebbe, a 43-year-old man, pleaded guilty before a federal judge more than four months after he and his wife, Diana Toebbe, were arrested. In return for his criminal application, he is expected to be sentenced to 12.5 to 17.5 years in prison. His wife, a teacher, has so far maintained her innocence and sought release for the care of her two teenage children. But her husband’s plea bargain also makes her guilty.

“Diana Toebbe knowingly and voluntarily joined the conspiracy to communicate Restricted Data to another person with the intent to secure an advantage to a foreign nation and committed multiple overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy, including acting as a lookout while Mr. Toebbe serviced three dead drops,” the document said.

The document stops shorts of naming the country the couple tried to sell the secrets to.

It is known simply that it was an ally of the U.S whose original language was not English. The U.S. nuclear submarine was at the center of a heated diplomatic crisis last September, when Australia canceled a mega deal with France to announce a strategic partnership with the United States and Britain.

The Department of Justice said in a statement that Toebbe had been working on the design of the Virginia-class submarine reactor since 2012, the latest generation of attack submarines in the US Navy. In April 2020, he sent a package abroad with an initial set of documents and instructions for contact through a return address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Toebbe sent abroad a package of “a sample of Restricted Data and instructions for establishing a covert relationship to purchase additional Restricted Data,” according to the Justice Department.

“Toebbe began corresponding via encrypted email with an individual whom he believed to be a representative of the foreign government.

The individual was really an undercover FBI agent.

Over the course of several months, Toebbe received increasing payments in the tens of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, and hidden SD cards laden with stolen secrets inside peanut butter sandwiches, packets of chewing gum, and band-aid wrappers. According to court documents, the country that Toebbe thought was selling secrets was cooperating with the FBI.

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