Couple sentenced in plot to sell U.S. submarine secrets by hiding intel in peanut butter sandwich
A Navy engineer and his wife who both pleaded guilty to a plot to try to sell sensitive secrets about the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines to a foreign country were handed lengthy prison terms Wednesday.
A Navy engineer and his wife who both pleaded guilty to a plot to try to sell sensitive secrets about the Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines to a foreign country, in one case by hiding them in a peanut butter sandwich, were handed lengthy prison terms Wednesday.
Citing the “great danger” that a Navy engineer and his wife posed to U.S. security, U.S. District Judge Gina Groh, sentenced Jonathan Toebbe to more than 19 years and his wife, Diana Toebbe, to nearly 22 years. The sentences were handed down on Jonathan Toebbe’s 44th birthday.
They came after Groh, in August, rejected earlier plea agreements that had called for reduced sentencing guidelines.
The Annapolis, Maryland, couple and their attorneys described the defendants’ struggles with mental health issues and alcohol and said they were anxious about the nation’s political climate when they sold secrets in exchange for $100,000 in cryptocurrency.
Groh said their tale “reads like a crime novel or a movie script” and that Jonathan Toebbe’s “actions and greedy self-serving intentions placed military service members at sea and every citizen of this country in a vulnerable position and at risk of harm from adversaries.”
Rating: 5