WASHINGTON, Feb 14 (Reuters) – A former U.S. Navy engineer charged with attempting to sell secrets about nuclear submarines to a foreign power pleaded guilty on Monday as part of a deal with prosecutors.
A U.S. Justice Department lawyer unveiled the agreement with nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe during a court hearing in West Virginia federal court.
Toebbe, 42, admitted to conspiring with his wife to disclose restricted data, a violation of the Atomic Energy Act that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Toebbe’s plea agreement calls for him to face a likely sentence of between 12 years to 17 years in prison.
The plea deal “indicates that the government likely had a very strong case and saw this conduct as posing a very serious risk to national security,” said Brandon Van Grack, a national security lawyer at Morrison & Foerster not involved in the case.
Toebbe, who had a top-secret security clearance, communicated with an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign official over the course of several months, the Justice Department said.
At one point, Toebbe hid a digital memory card containing documents about submarine nuclear reactors in half a peanut butter sandwich at a “dead drop” location in West Virginia while his wife acted as lookout, the Justice Department said.
An FBI agent testified during a court hearing in October that Toebbe asked for $5 million worth of cryptocurrency in exchange for the secret submarine information. A payment made by the FBI to Toebbe worth about $100,000 has not been located, the agent testified.
