A Maryland-based Navy nuclear engineer and his wife have been arrested on charges of selling secret information about the design of nuclear power warships to someone they thought was a foreign power but was actually an undercover FBI agent. .

The Justice Department claims Jonathan Toebbe, through his Pentagon-issued national security clearance, had access to restricted data about naval nuclear technology and used that access to send a package to an unnamed foreign government on April 1, 2020. .

The FBI did not disclose in the complaint how it obtained the package sent to the unnamed country or the name of the country. .

Toebbe, cautious that he may have been communicating with someone other than a representative of the unnamed country, asked the contact to place a sign within the embassy's property in Washington, D.C., to prove their credentials, the complaint said.

Court documents claim the Navy engineer then agreed to sell restricted data to the undercover agent for $10,000 in cryptocurrency. 

According to the Justice Department, the card contained restricted data about submarine nuclear reactors