A federal judge in West Virginia approved new harsher plea agreements for an Annapolis couple who plotted to sell secrets about American nuclear-powered warships, a month after a different judge had rejected their previous deals for being too lenient.

The previous plea agreements for Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe, 43, and wife Diana, 46, had called for sentencing ranges below the federal sentencing guidelines. Jonathan Toebbe’s plea called for between roughly 12 and 17 years, and while Diana Toebbe’s plea called for three years.

Specific ranges were not disclosed at Tuesday’s plea hearing or in their plea agreements, but call for a range within the guidelines for Jonathan Toebbe, which was previously pegged at between 15 1/2 years and 19 1/2 years in prison, and could be as high as 27 years.

Diana Toebbe, a former private school teacher, faces a more significant jump: her agreement calls for the low-end of the guidelines, which would be more than 12 1/2 years.

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The couple were arrested in October 2021 after making the fourth in a series of pre-arranged “dead drops” of classified information in the West Virginia mountains. The parents of two dressed up like they were going on a hike, wearing backpacks and taking pictures of the scenery, then left an SD card inside a peanut butter sandwich.

The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information to that country. He included in the package instructions to his supposed contact for how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said.

That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. That set off a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country made contact with Toebbe, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information Toebbe was offering.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that the couple had assisted the government in recovering most of the funds, and all of the classified material.

FBI agents who searched the couple’s home found a trash bag of 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 court testimony last year.

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The country to which Jonathan Toebbe was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court.

The previous pleas were brought to West Virginia U.S. District Judge Gina Groh for approval last month, and while she said she generally honors plea agreements, she said the sentencing options were “strikingly deficient” considering the seriousness of the charges.

“I don’t find any justifiable reasons for accepting either one of these plea agreements,” Groh said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

justin.fenton@thebaltimorebanner.com

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Justin Fenton is an investigative reporter for the Baltimore Banner. He previously spent 17 years at the Baltimore Sun, covering the criminal justice system. His book, "We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption," was released by Random House in 2021 and became an HBO miniseries. 

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