The nuclear engineer accused of trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets hidden inside peanut butter sandwiches pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge that will put him behind bars for up to 17 years.
Jonathan Toebbe, 43, who worked for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, and his wife, Diana, were charged with espionage-related crimes after trying to trade secrets for $5 million in cryptocurrency. The FBI intercepted the plot, and when Toebbe and his wife allegedly passed SD cards hidden in a peanut butter sandwich, a Band-Aid wrapper, and a gum package, undercover agents were on the receiving end.
“Among the secrets the U.S. government most zealously protects are those related to the design of its nuclear-powered warships," said Matthew Olsen, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s National Security Division. "The defendant was entrusted with some of those secrets, and instead of guarding them, he betrayed the trust placed in him and conspired to sell them to another country for personal profit.”
On Monday, Jonathan Toebbe pleaded guilty in a West Virginia courtroom. His wife's case is being handled separately.
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Jonathan Toebbe, a onetime physics teacher whose social media profile touts an interest in spycraft and who used the code name "Alice," agreed to return the $100,000 in cryptocurrency the FBI gave the couple to win their trust.
He also agreed to allow access to the ProtonMail accounts he used to communicate with the bureau, as well as some 50 packets of secret information he tried to peddle.
"Guilty, your honor,” the defendant said multiple times when asked by Magistrate Judge Robert Trumble if he admitted to conspiring to communicate restricted data to a foreign government in exchange for payment between April 2020 and October 2021.
Prosecutors say Diana Toebbe, a history and English teacher at the Key School in Annapolis, helped her husband in his scheme.
The FBI observed Jonathan Toebbe use a dead drop in Virginia in August of 2020, with an SD card hidden in a chewing gum package. The bureau sent the Toebbes $70,000 in cryptocurrency and received a decryption key.
“I am painfully aware that I lack training in observation and blending in," a lengthy note from “Alice” read. “One day, when it is safe, perhaps two old friends will have a chance to stumble into each other at a cafe, share a bottle of wine and laugh over stories of their shared exploits."
On June 26, the FBI said Jonathan Toebbe carried out a dead drop in West Virginia while his wife acted as a lookout, and the bureau recovered a 16-gigabyte SD card “wrapped in plastic and placed between two slices of bread on a half of a peanut butter sandwich.”
Jonathan Toebbe's social media account indicates he was left-leaning, and his wife was an ardent opponent of former President Donald Trump on social media.
After Trump won the presidency, Diana Toebbe retweeted multiple #TheResistance hashtags in January 2017 and posted a “Women Can Stop Trump” Facebook profile picture of herself in October 2016.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/engineer-who-used-peanut-butter-sandwich-to-try-to-sell-nuclear-secrets-pleads-guilty
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