Security News > 2022 > November > Husband and wife nuclear warship 'spy' team get 20 years each

US Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana Toebbe were sentenced to 232 months and 262 months, respectively, on charges that they worked together to hand numerous physical and electronic documents, including schematics for the advanced Virginia-class nuclear submarine, to an agent of a foreign government.

Toebbe never spoke to a spy - when the unnamed foreign government received an initial teaser package of documents from the engineer, it handed them right over to a local FBI attaché.

Toebbe then spent the better part of two years attending to dead drops and being convinced by the Feds that they were the foreign government Toebbe had reached out to - quite convincingly at that.

Untrusting at first, Toebbe was convinced that the FBI were foreign agents when they managed to slip a visual signal into the window of a building controlled by the unnamed foreign government he believed he was speaking to.

The FBI didn't say whether the foreign country was in on the visual signal ruse, but the plan worked and Toebbe started cooperating.

The FBI then paid Toebbe $10,000 in Monero cryptocurrency as a sign of good faith.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/husband_and_wife_spy_team/