The Toebbes, Jonathan and Diana, were set to be sentenced in August for attempting to sell Virginia-class submarine technology to a foreign nation, according to a Thursday court filing.
The Husband-Wife duo were to face the judge together on Aug. 16 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time in the Martinsburg District Judge Courtroom at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. Both made deals with the U.S. Attorney and pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.
Diana Toebbe pleaded out this week, following a Justice Department press release last week about Jonathan Toebbe’s guilty plea. The charge the couple faces carries a life sentence and Jonathan Toebbe, the mastermind of the scheme according to the government’s complaint, will serve at least 12-and-a-half years of that. He is 43.
Diana Toebbe, 45, also faces a life sentence for her role as a co-conspirator. Court filings paint her as an accomplice. Her plea agreement described her role as a lookout for her husband, who hid classified, encrypted digital data about Virginia-class submarine technology and operations in half-eaten sandwiches and chewing gum packets for FBI agents — who he thought were representatives of a foreign government — to find.
The Toebbes were arrested in 2020, mere months after Jonathan, a federal employee since 2012, offered to sell a foreign government technical data about the Virginia class boats that he had smuggled, page by page, out of the Navy’s Reactor Engineering Division and to the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania: a facility outside of Pittsburgh managed by Fluor Marine Propulsion for the National Security Administration.
