The wife of a US Navy engineer admitted in federal court Friday to helping her husband try to sell secrets regarding nuclear-powered submarines to a foreign power.
Diana Toebbe, 46, admitted to keeping watch when her husband, Jonathan, filed classified documents on the technology of US nuclear-powered submarines, according to the Department of Justice.
Jonathan Toebbe, 43, had already pleaded guilty on Monday before a federal judge in exchange for a prison sentence of between 12 and a half and 17 and a half years.
But Diana, a teacher at a private school, had maintained her innocence until Friday. With this plea agreement, she faces a maximum of three years in prison.
The incredible affair was revealed in October 2021 with the arrest of the couple, accused of having sought to sell information to an unidentified foreign power. Court documents suggest he is a non-English speaking US ally.
Jonathan Toebbe had been working since 2012 on the design of the Virginia-class submarine reactors, the latest generation of attack submersibles in the American fleet.
In April 2020, he sent a package to a third country with the first documents and instructions for establishing contact, promising to deliver “high-value information”.
The package had arrived in December 2020 at the attaché of the American federal police in this unidentified country. An FBI investigator, undercover, had then established contact with the engineer by posing as a representative of this country who cooperated with American justice.
Jonathan Toebbe had received between June and August 2021 payments in cryptocurrency for $100,000, in exchange for confidential information from the Navy.
This data was contained in encrypted SD cards, dropped by the couple in “mailboxes” and concealed in a peanut butter sandwich, a packet of chewing gum or a bandage wrapper.
Besides the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and India have a fleet of nuclear-powered ships.
US nuclear-powered submarines were at the center of a serious diplomatic crisis in September 2021, when Australia canceled a mega contract with France to announce a strategic partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom. United.