Security News > 2021 > October > Nuclear engineer's espionage plans unraveled by undercover FBI agent
A Navy nuclear engineer and his wife were arrested under espionage-related charges alleging violations of the Atomic Energy Act after selling restricted nuclear-powered warship design data to a person they believed was a foreign power agent.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe sold the confidential information to an undercover FBI agent.
Jonathan Toebbe served as a nuclear engineer assigned to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, also known as Naval Reactors, of the Department of the Navy.
While working as a Navy nuclear engineer, Toebbe had access to naval nuclear propulsion information, including military sensitive design elements, operating parameters, and performance characteristics for nuclear-powered warships' reactors.
According to court documents, the FBI's attaché in the unspecified country informed the FBI, which, in December 2020, initiated contact with Jonathan Toebbe via encrypted ProtonMail email through an undercover agent posing as a representative of COUNTRY 1.
"The samples will be encrypted using GnuPG symmetric encryption with a randomly generated passphrase," Toebbe told the undercover agent via encrypted email.