A US Navy engineer and his wife have been sentenced to more than 19 years and 22 years respectively for their efforts to sell nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign government.
West Virginia federal judge Gina Groh on Wednesday sentenced Jonathan Toebbe to 232 months in prison, or about 19 years and a third, for conspiring to communicate restricted data to a foreign government. The judge also sentenced his wife and co-conspirator Diana Toebbe to 262 months in prison, or about 21.8 years, for the same crime.
Jonathan Toebbe was a Navy Department employee working as a nuclear engineer and assigned to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program where he had an active national security clearance. Jonathan and Toebbe were arrested in October last year in a federal sting after they tried to pass classified information to someone they believed to be an agent of a foreign government.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not specify which foreign government the married couple had tried to pass on the classified information to, but alleges that the efforts began in April 2020 when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package to a foreign government that contained sample data and restricted instructions. to establish a covert relationship to purchase additional restricted data.
The package was later obtained by an FBI agent in the foreign country in December 2020. It is unclear from the complaint how the FBI came into possession of the package.
From that point on, Toebbe continued the communication effort with someone they believed was a foreign government agent but was actually working for American investigators. During this time, the pair received multiple cryptocurrency payments in exchange for their efforts in passing on classified information.
Groh said at the time that he generally respects plea deals, but felt the deal was “shockingly poor” in this case because of its national security implications, the Associated Press reported.
In their bid to win leniency, the couple and their lawyers described how they struggled with mental health and alcohol issues. Their lawyers also argued that the couple’s talk of fleeing the United States during the time period in which this conspiracy took place was due to their disdain for then-President Donald Trump and not any specific effort to evade the arrest
Groh said in August that the pair had acted “for selfish and greedy reasons, but could have caused great harm” to the US Navy with the secrets they traded. The pair eventually collected $100,000 in cryptocurrency payments over the course of the conspiracy.
“I find no justifiable reason to accept any of these plea deals,” Groh said in August.
On Wednesday, Groh said the conspiracy “reads like a crime novel or a movie script” and that Jonathan Toebbe’s “aggressive actions and self-serving intentions put military service members at sea and all citizens of this country in a vulnerable position and at risk of suffering from them.” damage from the adversaries”.
Before the sentencing, Jonathan said he “believed that my family was under great threat, that democracy itself was collapsing” and that he took “hasty action to try to save them from serious harm”.
Diane also said her decision to stick with the plan was “catastrophic” for her and her family.
“I didn’t think about my children, who have suffered more,” she said. “Their lives will be forever marked by the decision I made.” She also said she should have convinced her husband to drop the scheme.
Diane eventually received a longer sentence than her husband after attempting to send her husband two letters from prison. Groh read those letters in court during the sentencing hearing. In the letters, he encouraged his Jonathan to deny his involvement in the scheme and say he “knew nothing of it”. In one letter, Diane asked her husband to read the letter in the toilet after reading it.
Groh said Diane showed she lacked genuine remorse and did not take responsibility for her actions.
Groh also admonished Diane’s attorney, Barry Beck, for seeking a lesser sentence by claiming she was merely an accomplice.
“Your client put this country in great danger,” Groh told Beck. “No matter how you say it, the damage to this nation was great.”
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