• A nuclear engineer was arrested by undercover FBI agents for selling classified information.
• In exchange for his data, the engineer requested tens to thousands of dollars in crypto.
• FBI arrested engineer, his wife and their daughter for selling sensitive data and espionage.

FBI agents arrested the wife and nuclear engineer of West Virginia for selling sensitive data and spying. The couple were paid tens to thousands of dollars by undercover FBI agents in return for the SD cards containing their data.

They sold details on the plans for nuclear-powered warships. To make it happen, an undercover FBI agent pretended that he was a representative from a foreign country for one year. The FBI agent also paid the couple cryptocurrency for their restricted data. This was to close the deal.

According to Merrick B. Garland (Attorney General),

According to the complaint, there was an attempt to communicate information regarding our design for nuclear submarines with a foreign country.

Jonathan and Diana Toebbe were captured by NCIS and FBI on October 9. Both of them will be appearing before the federal court on Tuesday.

Jonathan Toebbe was actually a nuclear engineer who served before in the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. He also held active security clearance through the U.S. Department of Defense.

Reports state that the FBI raised suspicions about Toebbe after he was found sending samples and instructions to establish covert communications, along with additional information. It happened in April 2020.

Toebbe also received undisclosed crypto in the mail last June 2021. The agent said that he sent this as a “good faith payment” after receiving some sample data. The couple, on the other hand, used a “dead drop” to hide the SD card and put it inside a peanut butter sandwich. This time the agent paid $20,000 for decryption keys.

The FBI asked Toebbe for more information about U.S. nuclear submarines in the second dead fall. Toebbe was paid $70,000 in crypto by the FBI. Finally, Toebbe and the FBI were able to capture the couple during the third dead-drop.

To note, this isn’t the first time that U.S federal agencies used crypto as a part of investigations on criminal activities. The U.S. department began offering crypto-based compensations as a reward for Justice last August. These are in return for valuable information to capture high-ranking terrorist suspects.

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