Chewing Gum Spy Received $100,000 in Crypto – Trustnodes
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Jonathan Toebbe, 43, of Maryland has pleaded guilty to selling out his country for $100,000 in crypto.
The former US Navy nuclear engineer had information related to military sensitive design elements, operating parameters and performance characteristics of the reactors for nuclear powered warships, the Justice Department said.
Toebbe was sent $10,000 in crypto in June last year by an undercover agent pretending to be a foreign government.
The trapped spy then placed an SD card with sensitive information within a peanut-butter sandwich at a pre-arranged location in Virginia.
Afterwhich, another $20,000 in crypto was released with Toebbe then emailing the decryption key for the SD Card.
In August 2021, the SD Card was this time concealed “in a chewing gum package” with it containing Restricted Data for the payment of $70,000.
Toebbe will now serve a minimum of 12.5 years in prison for chewing gum and eating sandwiches while cryptoing with restricted data.
The crypto is thought to be monero, which means the whole world now knows FBI not only cryptos, but it also has monero specifically.
That’s one of the most private cryptocurrencies as it makes it difficult, if at all possible, to track movements on the blockchain. Though there may be holes, but it’s definitely more private than bitcoin.
Thus the US government wants us to know that their spies can pay in crypto if you want to send them information, including bitcoin of course but also now monero.
High tech tools will be required like chewing gum or peanut butter, with it unclear in this case why they needed SD Cards when they had email, but obviously James Bond in the office is a bit boring isn’t it.
The starting price appears to be $100,000 which might be a lot in some countries, though in crypto it sounds like no more than three doge.
The Justice Department does not say if they recovered this monero. Toebbe can potentially claim he lost it in the s**tcoin casino with FBI checkmated because even if they knew how to track monero, they wouldn’t reveal it for some doge.
In a decade of forced holding, this guy might be rich tho. In the meantime, some supply has been taken off crypto so everything is good for bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency
