WASHINGTON—A U.S. Navy employee and his wife have been charged with attempting to share secrets about nuclear submarine technology with a foreign country, according to court documents unsealed on Sunday.
The documents name the employee as Jonathan Toebbe and his wife as Diana Toebbe. Mr. Toebbe is a nuclear engineer, holds a top-secret clearance with the Department of Defense and has worked for the government for almost a decade, according to the documents.
The...
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WASHINGTON—A U.S. Navy employee and his wife have been charged with attempting to share secrets about nuclear submarine technology with a foreign country, according to court documents unsealed on Sunday.
The documents name the employee as Jonathan Toebbe and his wife as Diana Toebbe. Mr. Toebbe is a nuclear engineer, holds a top-secret clearance with the Department of Defense and has worked for the government for almost a decade, according to the documents.
The Toebbes couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The Navy declined to comment.
The documents allege that in April 2020, Mr. Toebbe sent a mail package containing U.S. Navy documents, instructions and an SD card to a foreign government. The FBI obtained the package in December 2020, the court filings said.
The foreign country isn’t named in the court documents. It couldn’t immediately be determined whether it was a U.S. friend or rival.
The package included guidance on how to use an encrypted communication platform, along with other documents. Mr. Toebbe marked the information as confidential and asked for it to be forwarded to the other country’s military agency, the documents said.
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“I believe this information will be of great value to your nation,” he said in the letter, according to the court documents.
It was dated April 1, 2020, April Fool’s day. “This is not a hoax,” he added in his note.
The documents contained information classed as restricted data, according to an expert at the U.S. Navy consulted by the FBI.
The encrypted platform that Mr. Toebbe wanted to use is typically used by people that want to keep their activities and locations secret, the FBI said in the documents.
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An FBI agent who intercepted the mail package began corresponding with Mr. Toebbe, pretending to be a representative of the foreign country. The FBI offered Mr. Toebbe a gift in exchange for the data, but he declined to meet because of the risks involved in a face-to-face meeting, according to the documents.
Mr. Toebbe instead proposed payment in cryptocurrency, suggesting a $100,000 initial payment to prove their seriousness before providing a link to secret documents.
“Please remember I am risking my life for your benefit,” he said, according to court documents.
The FBI and Mr. Toebbe in further exchanges discussed how the payment and delivery of documents could occur. Eventually the FBI paid $10,000 in cryptocurrency to Mr. Toebbe under a pseudonym as a show of good faith, the court documents say.
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Mr. Toebbe went ahead with a dead drop of documents in West Virginia, where he was observed by the FBI, the documents say. His wife accompanied him, the court records show. The drop of data was carried out by the SD card left in a peanut butter sandwich.
The contents of the card were examined by a Navy subject matter expert, who determined it contained militarily sensitive details about Virginia-class submarine reactors.
Further exchanges were coordinated between Mr. Toebbe and FBI agents posing as officials of a foreign country. In total, the FBI paid Mr. Toebbe $100,000 by August 2021, according to the documents. It couldn’t be determined whether the FBI recovered the money.
The Toebbes were arrested in Jefferson County, W.Va., by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on Saturday. They will have their initial appearances on Tuesday in federal court, the Justice Department said.
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Write to Jessica Donati at jessica.donati@wsj.com