MARTINSBURG, W. Va. — A U.S. Naval engineer pleaded guilty Monday to attempting to pass secrets about U.S. nuclear-powered warships to a foreign country, multiple media outlets reported.
Jonathan Toebbe, 43, entered his plea in a federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to a single count of conspiracy to communicate restricted data, according to The Associated Press.
According to the criminal complaint, Toebbe “passed, and continues to pass, Restricted Data as defined by the Atomic Energy Act ... to a foreign government ... with the witting assistance of his spouse, Diana Toebbe,” Stars and Stripes reported at the time of the couple’s October 2021 arrest.
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Specifically, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Toebbe of selling information for nearly a year to a contact that he believed to represent a foreign nation but was instead an undercover FBI agent.
Per the plea agreement, Toebbe could face between roughly 12 and 17 years in prison. He also agreed to help federal officials locate all classified information in his possession, as well as the roughly $100,000 paid to him in cryptocurrency throughout the scheme, The Washington Post reported.
He had faced the possibility of life in prison, The New York Times reported.
Toebbe, who has a top-secret clearance prior to his arrest, acknowledged during the plea hearing to conspiring to pass classified information to a foreign government, causing “injury to the United States.”
Diana Toebbe, a private school teacher who is accused of serving as her husband’s lookout at several “dead-drop” locations throughout the scheme, pleaded not guilty, and her case remains pending.
The country to which Jonathan Toebbe was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed during Monday’s plea hearing.
David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department national security lawyer now in private practice, told the Post that Toebbe’s plea sends “an incredibly loud message that the government would not settle for anything less than a heavy sentence. Even at 12 years, the bottom end of the sentencing range, that’s heavy time.”
According to the Times, a sentence of more than a dozen years for Toebbe would be “in line with similar cases involving U.S. officials who thought they were selling secrets overseas but instead were caught by undercover FBI agents.”
-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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