US Navy engineer accused of hiding classified files in a sandwich for selling submarine secrets | US news

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A US Navy engineer who allegedly stashed a memory card loaded with classified files in a peanut butter sandwich before leaving it at the Metroprop site is accused of selling secrets about nuclear submarines.

The Justice Department said Jonathan Toby is accused of attempting to pass information about the design of a nuclear-powered US submarine to an individual believed to be a representative of a foreign government but who turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.

In a criminal complaint detailing the espionage-related charges, he allegedly sold information over the past year or so to a contact he believed represented a foreign power. This country is not mentioned in court documents.

In exchange for the information, the FBI said it had received separate payments of around $100,000 (£73,500).

At one point, the 42-year-old allegedly hid a flash drive containing documents about nuclear reactors in a peanut butter sandwich half at a “dead drop” site in West Virginia, with his wife Diana as an observer, according to a criminal complaint.

Dead Drop is an old-school spy trick in which the source leaves a valuable item in an agreed-upon hiding spot for the recipient to retrieve it undetected.

The card contained “militarily sensitive design elements, operating standards, and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors,” according to federal court documents.

The complaint says another memory card was hidden in a pack of gum.

All along, Toebbe had a top-level secret security clearance.

He and his wife were arrested from Annapolis, Maryland in West Virginia on Saturday.

They have been charged with conspiracy and “transmission of prohibited data” in violation of the Atomic Energy Act, and are due to appear in court in West Virginia on Tuesday.

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