A US Navy engineer on Monday admitted to court that he tried to sell secrets about nuclear submarines to a foreign power, the US Department of Justice said.
Jonathan Toebbe, 43, pleaded guilty to a federal judge, more than four months after he was arrested with his wife, Diana Toebbe. In exchange for his statement, he must be sentenced to up to 17.5 years in prison.
Diana, a teacher, claims she is innocent and has asked that she be released to care for her two teenage children. But her husband’s guilty plea also incriminates her.
Court documents do not specify which country the couple tried to sell the information to, and only suggest that they are an ally of the United States whose primary language is not English.
The Justice Department said in its note that Jonathan Toebbe had been working since 2012 on the design of reactors for Virginia-class submarines, the latest generation of attack submersibles in the US fleet.
In April 2020, Toebbe shipped a package overseas containing documents and instructions for contacting via a return address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The package contained “a sample of Restricted Information and instructions to establish a secret relationship to purchase more Restricted Information,” according to the Department of Justice.
“Toebbe began exchanging encrypted emails with an individual he believed to be a representative of a foreign government. The individual was, in fact, an undercover FBI agent,” the department detailed.
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