A US Navy nuclear engineer and his wife face life in prison after pleading guilty in a case related to an alleged plot to sell nuclear-powered warship secrets to Brazil.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe of Annapolis, Maryland, pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one felony count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.
The pair were first arrested in October 2021, after attempting to sell underwater secrets to Brazil, a scheme reportedly motivated in part by Diana Toebbe’s outrage at the election of Donald Trump as US president.
After Brazilian officials tipped off the FBI, an elaborate undercover operation caught the couple leaving military secrets in dead ends, including one in which a digital memory card was hidden in a peanut butter sandwich.
The new guilty pleas came a month after US District Judge Gina Groh rejected the couple’s initial pleas on the same charges, saying the sentencing options were “shockingly poor” considering the seriousness of the case.
The previous sentence range in the initial plea deals had required Jonathan to face a potential punishment of between approximately 12 and 17 years in prison, while Diana faced up to three years.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe of Annapolis, Maryland, pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to one felony count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.
Jonathan Toebbe was a US Navy nuclear engineer dealing with nuclear submarine propulsion systems when he tried to sell Navy secrets. Pictured: Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS New Mexico
Under the latest plea agreement filed Tuesday before federal Judge Robert Trumble, the pair would each face a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $100,000 fine, though prosecutors are asking for a sentence for Diana Toebbe at the lower end of the range. the guidelines.
Prosecutors said that sentence would remain one of the most significant imposed in modern times under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.
If the court does not accept the latest agreement, the defendants would again have the right to withdraw their guilty pleas and go to trial.
Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe, 43, abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design elements and performance characteristics of the Virginia-class submarines to someone he believed to be a representative of a foreign government, but was actually an undercover agent. FBI agent.
Although court records do not name the foreign government, the New York Times identified it as Brazil, citing a senior Brazilian official and others briefed on the investigation.
Diana Toebbe, 46, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, was accused of acting as a lookout at various pre-arranged locations where memory cards containing the secret information were left. . behind.
Memory cards were hidden devices in objects like a gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich.
Diana Toebbe, 46, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, was accused of acting as a lookout at several prearranged “dead spots.”
A sketch of Jonathan and Diana Toebbe’s first court appearance in West Virginia in October 2021
The couple was arrested after they planted a memory card at a dead end in Jefferson County, West Virginia.
None of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential, according to previous testimonies.
The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information to that country.
He included in the package, which had a Pittsburgh return address, instructions for his alleged contact on how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said.
That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country.
That triggered a month-long undercover operation in which Jonathan was contacted by an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information he was offering.
According to an indictment, federal agents watched as the Toebbes arrived at an agreed-upon location in West Virginia for the exchange, with Diana Toebbe appearing to serve as a lookout for her husband during a dead-end operation for which the FBI paid $20,000. according to the complaint.
The FBI recovered a blue memory card wrapped in plastic and sandwiched between two slices of bread in a peanut butter sandwich, according to court documents.
Jonathan also hid encrypted memory cards in a package of gum and band-aid wrappers at different drop-off locations.
The FBI provided the contents of the memory card to a Navy subject matter expert who determined the records included design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors, the Justice Department said.
Written communications between Jonathan and an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign spy show that the engineer had been collecting classified military information for several years.
Prosecutors said the government recovered classified information that Jonathan Toebbe had stored on electronic devices along with a “substantial amount” of the cryptocurrency.
During a search of the couple’s home, FBI agents found a trash bag containing shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports, and a “travel bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves. , according to court testimony last year.
Diana Toebbe’s attorneys at a December 2021 hearing denied prosecution claims citing 2019 messages exchanged by the couple in which she had contemplated fleeing the United States to avoid arrest.
Instead, the defense said contempt for then-President Donald Trump was the reason behind the couple’s emigration plans.
Currently only six countries operate nuclear-powered submarines: China, France, India, Russia, the UK and the US.
The United States and the United Kingdom are set to provide Australia with the technology to deploy nuclear-powered submarines, as part of the first initiative under the new trilateral security partnership AUKUS.
