The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Navy engineer charged in bid to share secrets
Government: He sold info for nearly a year to an undercover agent.
WASHINGTON — A Navy nuclear engineer with access to military secrets has been charged with trying to pass information about the design of American nuclear-powered submarines to someone he thought was a representative of a foreign government but who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, the Justice Department said Sunday.
In a criminal complaint detailing espionage-related charges against Jonathan Toebbe, the government said he sold information for nearly the past year to a contact he believed represented a foreign power. That country was not named in the court documents.
Toebbe, 42, was arrested Saturday in West Virginia along with his wife Diana, 45, after he placed a memory card at a prearranged “dead drop” in Jefferson County, according to the Justice Department.
It wasn’t clear whether either Toebbe had a lawyer. The Navy declined to comment Sunday.
The FBI says the scheme began in April 2020 when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and said he was interested in selling operations manuals and other sensitive information. Authorities say he also provided instructions for how to conduct the furtive relationship.
The FBI’S legal office in the foreign country received the package, with a return address of Pittsburgh, last December. That led to a months-long operation in which an agent posing as a representative of the foreign government offered to pay for the information.
In June, the FBI says, the undercover agent sent $10,000 in cryptocurrency to Toebbe, describing it as a sign of good faith and trust.
The following week, FBI agents watched as the Toebbes arrived in West Virginia for the exchange, with Diana Toebbe appearing to serve as a lookout during the dead-drop operation, according to the complaint. The FBI recovered a blue SD card wrapped in plastic and placed between two slices of bread on a peanut butter sandwich, the complaint says.
The FBI paid Toebbe $20,000 for the transaction and provided the contents of the SD card to a Navy subject matter expert, who determined the records included design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors, the DO J said.