By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A former U.S. Navy officer was charged with trying to sell secrets regarding nuclear submarines to a foreign country. He pleaded guilty Monday in a plea deal.

At a West Virginia federal court hearing, a U.S. Justice Department lawyer revealed the agreement with Jonathan Toebbe, a nuclear engineer.

Toebbe (42), admitted conspiring to his wife to reveal restricted data. This is a violation to the Atomic Energy Act and carries a maximum of life imprisonment

Toebbe’s wife Diana (45 years old), was accused of helping her husband. She is currently facing criminal charges. She has pleaded no guilty.

Toebbe agrees to a plea deal that will likely result in him serving a 12-year to 17-year sentence.

The plea deal “indicates that the government likely had a very strong case and saw this conduct as posing a very serious risk to national security,” said Brandon Van Grack, a national security lawyer at Morrison & Foerster not involved in the case.

An October indictment by the Prosecutors claimed that Toebbes had tried to sell secret government information about submarine propulsion to unidentified foreign countries.

Toebbe was granted a top secret security clearance. He communicated with an FBI agent pretending to be a foreign official for several months.

According to the Justice Department, Toebbe concealed a digital card with documents on submarine nuclear reactors inside a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich in a dead drop location in West Virginia. His wife was acting as a lookout.

According to Justice Department officials, the card contained “militarily-sensitive design elements, operating parameters, and performance characteristics for Virginia-class submarine reactors.”

In October, an FBI agent testified that Toebbe wanted $5 million in cryptocurrency as payment for secret submarine information. The agent said that Toebbe was not able to locate a $100,000 payment from FBI.