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Jonathan & Diana Toebbe: Atomic love rats face 20 years for trying to sell nuke secrets to Brazil

Jonathan Toebbe, 43, and his wife Diana are facing 20 years in prison combined after they allegedly tried to sell secrets about American nuclear warships to Brazilian officials

A US Navy nuclear engineer and his wife are facing 20 years in prison combined after they allegedly tried to sell secrets about American nuclear warships to Brazilian officials.

43-year-old Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana were apprehended in October 2021 after prosecutors accused him of approaching a foreign government intending to divulge sensitive information about the nuclear reactors that power the US submarine fleet. While federal prosecutors concealed the identity of the foreign power, a senior Brazilian official and others with knowledge of the investigation have confirmed Toebbe approached their government in April 2020, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, March 15.
 

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The New York Times reported on Tuesday, March 15, that Toebbe's outreach was an "odd choice" per analysts, considering then-President Donald J Trump and his Brazilian counterpart President Jair Bolsonaro had fostered strong alliances between the countries, with some noting that the international relations were the closest they'd ever been in decades. While the Brazilian government was keen on developing its own military technology, officials didn't accept American secrets and instead contacted the FBI. The Toebbes' scheme unraveled in no time as federal officials devised a sting operation.

This revelation that Toebbe contacted Brazil came one month after he pleaded guilty in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to a single count of conspiracy to communicate restricted data. Meanwhile, his wife Diana, 45, still maintains her innocence. The disgraced naval engineer faces up to 17 years in prison, while his wife faces three. Officials familiar with the investigation explained that Toebbes chose Brazil believing the South American nation was eager to acquire nuclear technology and had enough resources to buy American secrets. Furthermore, they were not hostile towards the US.

Text messages presented in court revealed how the couple acknowledged that soliciting American secrets to its adversaries, including Russia and China, was immoral. "It's not morally defensible either," Toebbe wrote, as per a court transcript. "We convinced ourselves it was fine, but it really isn't either, is it?" But Diana wrote, "I have no problems at all with it. I feel no loyalty to abstractions."

Toebbe's plot reportedly began in April 2020 when he sent a package of Navy documents to a Brazilian military intelligence agency. Toebbe wrote that he was interested in selling operations manuals, performance reports, and other sensitive information. However, that agency told the FBI of Toebbe's scheme and roped in an undercover FBI agent to pose as a Brazilian official for a sting operation that led to the couple's arrests.

According to the Times, the package was received by the FBI in December 2021 via its legal attaché office in Brazil. This was followed by an intense undercover operation that saw the agent contact Toebbe and agree to compensate the couple with $100K in cryptocurrency for the information they were offering. In order to gain his trust, he was already paid $70,000 before agents apprehended him. 

Toebbe was initially reluctant to deliver the classified documents to the undercover agent. "I am concerned that using a dead drop location your friend prepares makes me very vulnerable," Toebbe wrote to the agent, per court records. "For now, I must consider the possibility that you are not the person I hope you are."

To assure him that he was talking to a Brazilian official, the undercover agent told him to look for a signal placed in a window on a Brazilian government building in Washington DC during Memorial Day weekend.

Toebbe reportedly saw the signal and agreed to drop a sample of the stolen records to the official, hiding them in a peanut butter sandwich. Diana, in the meantime, allegedly served as an accomplice and a "lookout" at several prearranged "dead-drop" locations where her husband placed memory cards containing Navy secrets. However, the wife has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the case against her remains pending.

According to the Daily Mail, federal agents searched Toebbe's Annapolis, Maryland home and found a trash bag containing shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, children's passports, as well as a go-bag containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves.

Court documents stated that Diana previously claimed that her husband only wanted to flee the country because of her hatred of Trump. Her legal team has also maintained that she only wanted to leave the US because of her disdain for the then-POTUS and not because she was worried about their alleged scheme being exposed. 

Jonathan and Diana Toebbe were eventually arrested in October and charged with selling secret information about US nuclear submarines to an undercover FBI agent posing as an operative for a foreign country.

Federal records show that Toebbe served as a nuclear engineer for the United States Navy and reportedly holds an active Top Secret Security Clearance through the Defense Department and an active Q clearance from the Energy Department.