A U.S. Navy engineer and his wife have been sentenced to prison for trying to sell sensitive military secrets to an unnamed foreign government, including one instance where they hid official documents inside a peanut butter sandwich.
On Wednesday, Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana Toebbe, were sentenced to more than 19 years and nearly 22 years in prison, respectively, after they bothpled guilty to conspiracyearlier this year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Jonathan, 44, previously served as a nuclear engineer with the U.S. Navy and was assigned to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, also known as Naval Reactors, per the DOJ. Diana, 46, was aprivate-school teacherin their hometown of Annapolis, Maryland, according toThe Washington Post.
During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Gina Groh cited the “great danger” the couple posed to U.S. security and said the pair’s story “reads like a crime novel or a movie script,” per the Associated Press. Groh added that Jonathan’s “actions and greedy self-serving intentions placed military service members at sea and every citizen of this country in a vulnerable position and at risk of harm from adversaries.”
Though Jonathan had access to the sensitive data through his job, thePostreported that Diana was handed a longer sentence on the grounds that the judge found she obstructed justice and was not entitled to a shorter prison stint for accepting responsibility. The AP also reported that Diana attempted to send her husband two letters from jail, which were intercepted, where one encouraged him to lie about her involvement.
Per the DOJ, which cited court documents, Jonathan previously sent a package to an unnamed foreign government that contained a sample of restricted data and instructions on how to establish a relationship to purchase more secrets.
After messaging through encrypted email with someone he believed to be a representative of the foreign government — who was actually an undercover FBI agent — Jonathan continued communicating with them for several months before a deal was struck to sell restricted data for thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, the DOJ said.
In June 2021, after the FBI agent sent $10,000 to Jonathan as a “good faith” payment, per the DOJ, Jonathan delivered an SD card at a pre-arranged location that contained military-sensitive design elements relating to submarine nuclear reactors. The item was hidden within half a peanut butter sandwich, the DOJ said.
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After the undercover agent obtained the SD card, they sent Jonathan a $20,000 cryptocurrency payment, which prompted him to then email the agent a decryption key for the SD Card.
Months later, Jonathan dropped off another SD card, which was hidden inside a pack of chewing gum. After the FBI agent made a $70,000 payment, they received another decryption key and discovered that card had similar restricted data on it too.
The FBI then arrested Jonathan and Diana on Oct. 9, 2021, after he placed a further SD card at a pre-arranged spot in West Virginia, according to the DOJ.
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During the sentencing hearing, Jonathan said, per thePost, that he believed his family “was in dire threat, that democracy itself was on the verge of collapse. And that sort of catastrophic thinking overwhelmed me.”
The outlet noted that the couple, who have two sons ages 12 and 16, were attempting to leave the U.S. and an FBI search of their home found various items, including passports for their children, thousands of dollars in cash, shredded documents and a bag containing a flash drive and latex gloves.
“I failed in my responsibility to the American people to preserve the secrets that were entrusted with me,” Jonathan said at sentencing, per the Post, while Diana stated: “I should have followed my instinct and tried to talk my husband out of this plan, but then my family’s difficulties continued, my depression was at an all-time high, and I felt like the country’s political situation was dire.”
She added: “I didn’t just fail to talk him out of it; I actually participated in helping him, and I wanted him to succeed. At the time, I absurdly thought it was a way out of these struggles.”
Nicholas J. Compton, Jonathan’s public defender, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. A lawyer for Diana could not immediately be reached.
source: people.com
