Who is Jonathan Toebbe’s wife Diana?
DIANA Toebbe, along with her husband Jonathan, have been accused of trying to pass information about nuclear submarines to a foreign government.
The person they were in contact with though was actually an undercover FBI agent and the pair were arrested on October 9, 2021.
The K-12 school said on Sunday, October 10, 2021, that she had been suspended indefinitely.
The Toebbes live in Annapolis and have two children.
Her husband is a nuclear engineer, working for the US government since 2012, specializing in naval nuclear propulsion, the FBI says.
According to public Navy records, he worked for 15 months in the office of the chief of naval operations, the top officer in the military's branch.
He has also been assigned to a government-owned laboratory in the Pittsburgh area that officials say works on nuclear power for the US Navy.
What has Diana Toebbe been accused of?
It is unclear precisely what charges the couple face or how many counts, other than espionage-related charges.
The FBI says the scheme began in April 2020 when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information.
Authorities say he also provided instructions on how to conduct the furtive relationship, with a letter that said: “I apologize for this poor translation into your language. Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. This is not a hoax.”
Weeks later, federal agents watched as the Toebbes arrived at an agreed-upon location in West Virginia for the exchange, with Diana Toebbe appearing to serve as a lookout for her husband during a dead-drop operation for which the FBI paid $20,000.
The FBI recovered a blue memory card wrapped in plastic and placed between two slices of bread on a half of a peanut butter sandwich, court documents say.
The records on the memory card included design elements and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors.
The Justice Department describes those submarines as “cruise missile fast-attack submarines, which incorporate the latest in stealth, intelligence gathering, and weapons systems technology.”
The memory card also included a typed message that said, in part: “I hope your experts are very happy with the sample provided and I understand the importance of a small exchange to grow our trust.”
The FBI conducted similar dead-drop exchanges over the next several months, including one in August in eastern Virginia for which Toebbe was paid roughly $70,000.
In that instance, prosecutors say, he concealed in a chewing gum package a memory card that contained schematic designs for the Virginia-class submarine.
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The complaint alleges violations of the Atomic Energy Act, which restricts the disclosure of information related to atomic weapons or nuclear materials.
Espionage carries a maximum sentence of ten years under US law.