U.S. District Judge Gina Groh sentenced Jonathan Toebe to more than 19 years and his wife, Diana Toebe, to nearly 22 years. In August, he had rejected earlier deals that called for lower sentencing guidelines. The couple, from Annapolis, Maryland, and their lawyers described the defendants’ battles with mental health and alcohol problems and said they were concerned about the political climate when they secretly sold $100,000 in cryptocurrency. Groh said their story “reads like a crime novel or a movie script” and that Jonathan Toebbe’s “actions and greedy intentions put military service members at sea and every citizen of this country in a vulnerable position and in danger damage from opponents”. Diana Toebbe, who admitted acting as a lookout for her husband, received an increased sentence after the judge revealed during the couple’s five-hour sentencing hearing that she had tried to send her husband two letters from prison. US Navy Engineer Jonathan Toebbe appears for his first court hearing in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Photo: Reuters The letters, which were read out in court, were intercepted before they were delivered. In one of them, Diana Toebbe told her husband to throw the letter down the toilet after reading it. She encouraged him to lie about her involvement in the scheme and say she “knew nothing about any of this”. The judge said she had no genuine remorse and did not accept responsibility for her actions. Groh said: “This is a great story, right out of the movies.” Before sentencing, Jonathan Toebbe described his struggles with the stress of taking on additional duties and his problems with alcohol. He said he experienced warning signs of a nervous breakdown over an 18-month period that he failed to recognise. He said: “I believed that my family was under terrible threat, that democracy itself was collapsing.” That conviction overwhelmed him, he said, and led him to believe he had to take “swift action to try and save them from serious harm.” Prosecutors said Toebbe abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design and performance of the Virginia-class submarines to someone he thought was a foreign government official but was actually an undercover FBI agent. Diana Toebbe, 46, who taught at a private school in Maryland at the time of the pair’s arrest last October, admitted to acting as a lookout at several prearranged “dead drop” locations where memory sticks containing the classified information had been left. Memory cards were devices hidden in items such as a gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. The couple was arrested in October 2021 after Jonathan Toebbe placed a card in Jefferson County, West Virginia. None of the information was classified as top secret or classified, and it fell into a third category that is considered confidential, according to previous testimony. The pair entered guilty pleas in September in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one felony count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data. Start your day with the top stories from the US, plus the day’s must-reads from across the Guardian Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. In August, Groh rejected their initial guilty pleas to the same charges, saying the sentencing options were “strikingly lacking” considering the seriousness of the case. The previous sentencing range agreed to by attorneys for Jonathan Toebbe had called for a possible prison term of up to 17 years. Prosecutors had asked for three years for Diana Toebbe. During a hearing last December, Diana Toebbe’s lawyer, Barry Beck, said the couple wanted to leave the US because of their disdain for then-President Donald Trump. During a search of the couple’s home, FBI agents found a garbage bag with shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “go bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves, according to previous testimony. She said her decision to join the program was “devastating” as she is the mother of children aged 12 and 16, and that she should have tried to abort her husband. “I didn’t think about my children, who have suffered the most,” she said. “Their lives will be forever marked by the decision I made.” Groh said the choice was “deliberate and calculated.” He urged Beck, who had characterized his client as merely an accomplice in seeking a lesser sentence. “Your client has put this country in great danger,” Gro told Beck. “Whatever you call it, the damage to this nation has been great.” The FBI said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of naval documents to a foreign government and expressed interest in selling operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attache’s office in an unspecified foreign country, setting off a months-long undercover operation. An FBI agent posing as a representative of a foreign government contacted Toebbe, eventually paying in cryptocurrency for the information Toebbe provided. Groh said about $54,000 of the cryptocurrency has been recovered. He imposed fines of about $50,000 on each defendant.
