Maryland man pleads guilty after selling U.S. nuclear data to undercover FBI agent

A Maryland man who worked at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges after prosecutors say he delivered restricted data on the design of U.S. nuclear warships to an undercover federal agent he believed was representing a foreign government.

Jonathan Toebbe, 43, of Annapolis, used a Pittsburgh return address on one of the packages, according to court filings.

Toebbe was arrested in October after placing a secure digital (SD) card at a prearranged “dead drop” site in West Virginia, the third delivery he’d made after beginning what Toebbe thought was communication with a foreign agent in April 2020.

Toebbe was a Navy nuclear engineer assigned to its Nuclear Propulsion program, and held an active national-security clearance through the U.S. Defense Department giving him access to restricted information regarding the design, manufacture or use of atomic weapons and the creation of nuclear material for use in naval reactors.

According to his plea agreement, Toebbe sent a package to a foreign government (which U.S. Justice Department officials did not identify), listing a return address in Pittsburgh. The package contained a sample of restricted government data and instructions for establishing a covert relationship, with the goal of selling additional data.

The FBI’s legal office in the foreign country received the package, which had a return address of Pittsburgh, in December 2020, and an undercover agent began corresponding with Toebbe via encrypted email over several months, which led to an agreement for him to sell restricted data in exchange for payments in cryptocurrency.

Last June, the agent sent $10,000 in cryptocurrency as a “good-faith” payment to Toebbe. According to Justice Department officials, later that month Toebbe concealed an SD card in half of a peanut-butter sandwich and left it at a dead drop.

FBI officials arranged for another payment, this time $20,000, which bought them a “decryption key” that allowed them to read the restricted data.

The SD card contained sensitive military documents relating to submarine nuclear reactors.

On July 31, 2021, in south central Pennsylvania, Toebbe serviced a dead drop by leaving behind a typed message, which proposed a plan for him to provide 51 packages over time in exchange for a total of $5 million paid in cryptocurrency.

The message also included statements that the information “was slowly and carefully collected over several years” and “smuggled past security checkpoints a few pages at a time” and that one of the sets of information “reflects decades of U.S. Navy ‘lessons learned’ that will help keep your sailors safe.” Federal officials said Toebbe’s wife Diana provided cover and acted as a lookout a Toebbe serviced the dead drop.

After arranging two more SD card drops, the FBI arrested both Toebbe and his wife on Oct. 9, 2021, after they’d placed the third SD card at a dead drop in West Virginia.

“Among the secrets the U.S. government most zealously protects are those related to the design of its nuclear warship weapons systems,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The defendant was entrusted with some of those secrets and instead of guarding them, he betrayed the trust placed in him and conspired to sell them to another country for personal profit.”

Toebbe pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to communicate restricted data, and faces a possible life sentence. Justice officials said he will serve a minimum of 12-and-a-half years in federal prison.

“The FBI is relentless in its efforts to uncover those who seek to do our nation harm by targeting our most valuable secrets,” said Special Agent in Charge Mike Nordwall of the FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office. “This case is an example of the hard work and diligence of the FBI and our federal partners to neutralize and hold accountable those people who threaten our national security.”

Both the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service took part in the case.