coincodex.com
Key highlights:
- Jonathan Toebbe, a nuclear engineer working for the U.S. Navy, allegedly attempted to sell restricted data in exchange for the Monero cryptocurrency
- Toebbe communicated with an undercover agent who he believed was a representative of a foreign country
- Toebbe and his wife were arrested by the FBI and NCIS in West Virginia
Nuclear engineer tried to sell information about nuclear submarines, wanted payment in Monero
Jonathan Toebbe, a nuclear engineer working for the U.S. Navy, is being accused of attempting to sell restricted data related to U.S. nuclear submarines in exchange for the Monero cryptocurrency. Toebbe was communicating with an FBI special agent who he believed was a representative of a foreign nation, and handed over restricted data in exchange for payments.
Both Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana Toebbe, who was allegedly aiding him, have been arrested in Jefferson County, West Virginia.
Toebbe and an undercover agent reached multiple agreements where Toebbe would conceal an SD card containing restricted information in an innocuous object like chewing gum packaging or a peanut butter sandwich, and drop it off at an agreed upon location. After the agent picked up the SD card and made a payment to Toebbe, Toebbe would then provide a decryption key for unlocking the contents of the SD card. Throughout the investigation, Toebbe received a total of $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
A criminal complaint contains the email exchanges that Toebbe allegedly made with an undercover agent. In one of the messages, Toebbe says he is choosing to use Monero because transactions through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can be traced through blockchain analysis:
“I will tell you the location and how to find the card. I will also give you a Monero address. This form of gift protects both of us very well. I am very aware of the risks of blockchain analysis of BitCoin and other cryptocurrencies, and believe Monero gives both us excellent deniability.”
Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that features technologies like stealth addresses, ring signatures and RingCT to make transactions extremely difficult to trace. While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have fully transparent ledgers where the addresses and amounts involved in each transaction are visible to everyone, Monero obfuscates this information. Monero is currently the most popular private cryptocurrency, and has a market capitalization of $4.94 billion at the time of writing.