Couple charged with attempting to sell nuclear secrets

A Maryland nuclear engineer and his wife have been charged with attempting to sell nuclear secrets to a person they believed to be representing a foreign country.

Jonathan Toebbe, 42, his wife Diana Toebbe, 45, were arrested in West Virginia on Saturday.

According to the Justice Department, they were allegedly selling nuclear submarine design data through an SD card hidden inside a half-eaten “peanut butter sandwich.”

They believed the buyer was working for a foreign country, but the buyer was in fact in fact an undercover FBI agent.

The couple will have their initial court appearance on October 12. They have been selling information known as “Restricted Data” for about a year to the undercover agent.

The Toebbes have been charged under the Atomic Energy Act.

“The complaint charges a plot to transmit information relating to the design of our nuclear submarines to a foreign nation,” the DOJ statement quoted Attorney General Merrick B. Garland as saying.

“The work of the FBI, Department of Justice prosecutors, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Department of Energy was critical in thwarting the plot charged in the complaint and taking this first step in bringing the perpetrators to justice,” it added.

Jonathan Toebbe is an employee of the Department of Navy and served as a nuclear engineer. He held an active national security clearance through the DOJ, which gave him access to “Restricted Data.”

He had access to information regarding the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program.

“Toebbe worked with and had access to information concerning naval nuclear propulsion including information related to military sensitive design elements, operating parameters and performance characteristics of the reactors for nuclear powered warships,” the statement said.

The affidavit alleges that on “April 1, 2020, Jonathan Toebbe sent a package to a foreign government, listing a return address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, containing a sample of Restricted Data and instructions for establishing a covert relationship to purchase additional Restricted Data.”

Further according to the affidavit “Toebbe began corresponding via encrypted email with an individual whom he believed to be a representative of the foreign government. The individual was really an undercover FBI agent.”

The correspondence continued for several months and led to an agreement between him and the undercover agent to sell the “Restricted Data” in exchange for thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency.

The undercover agent also sent a $10,000 “good faith” payment to Toebbe on June 08. Later in the month, Toebbe along with his wife Diana travelled to an undisclosed location in West Virginia.

There, Diana acted as a lookout while Toebbe placed an SD card inside a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich to drop it at a “pre-arranged dead drop location.”

The undercover agent made a further $20,000 cryptocurrency payment to Toebbe after receiving the SD card.

Jonathan Toebbe then sent him the digital security key. According to the DOJ, the card contained “Restricted Data” related to the nuclear submarine reactors upon review.

On August 28, Jonathan Toebbe made another “dead drop” of an SD card in eastern Virginia, “this time concealing the card in a chewing gum package.”

Toebbe charged the undercover FBI agent $70,000 for the digital decryption key, and the card contained more “Restricted Data” related to submarine nuclear reactors.

Jonathan and Diana Toebbe were arrested on October 09 after they were dropping a third card at a different pre-arranged dead drop location in West Virginia.

The FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service are investigating the case.

“Trial Attorneys Matthew J. McKenzie and S. Derek Shugert of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jarod J. Douglas and Lara Omps-Botteicher of the Northern District of West Virginia, and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Lieber Smolar for the Western District of Pennsylvania,” will prosecute the case on behalf of the government