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(MARTINSBURG, WVa.) — A current U.S. Navy engineer and his wife were charged with sending restricted naval data internationally, with the intention of selling it, court records unsealed over the weekend show.

Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana Toebbe, allegedly communicated through encryption services with an undercover FBI agent and attempted to sell submarine data that was restricted, according to a criminal complaint.

The FBI were brought into the case from the beginning, court documents say.

Starting in December 2020, an unspecified country received a package from the United States, containing U.S. Navy documents as well as an SD disc and a letter explaining that it was not a hoax, the FBI says.

“Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation,” the letter in the package allegedly said. “This is not a hoax.”

They turned it over to the FBI legal attaché in the country, and FBI began to communicate through encrypted email, according to the complaint. Allegedly on the other side of that encrypted email was Jonathan Toebbe.

The FBI alleges he asked to be compensated in cryptocurrency writing in an email that, “Face to face meetings are very risky for me, as I am sure you understand. I propose exchanging gifts electronically, for mutual safety.”

An undercover FBI agent whom he was communicating with was posing as a representative of a foreign country, and allegedly suggested a drop location for him to drop off sensitive information, according to the complaint.

Court documents say Toebbe asked for a signal to be placed in the country’s main building as a sign of good faith while he visited Washington, D.C., which the FBI placed, and as a sign of good faith, paid Toebbe $10,000 in cryptocurrency.

After the exchange, the government alleges Teobbe dropped sensitive documents in West Virginia, while his wife allegedly acted as a lookout.

“Records show that JONATHAN TOEBBE is a government employee working as a nuclear engineer for the United States Navy and holds an active Top Secret Security Clearance through the United States Department of Defense and an active Q clearance from the United States Department of Energy,” the documents state.

The government alleges that Toebbe put an SD card containing restricted naval data inside a peanut butter sandwich.

“Specifically, the U.S. Navy subject matter expert determined that several of the documents contained militarily sensitive design elements, operating parameters, and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors,” court documents state.

In total, Toebbe allegedly received $100,000 for dropping off restricted data.

He allegedly conducted three drop-offs.

“The U.S. Navy subject matter expert determined that multiple documents on the SD card contained Restricted Data. Specifically, the U.S. Navy subject matter expert determined that the document contained schematic designs for the Virginia-class submarine. Virginia-class submarines are nuclear-powered cruise missile fastattack submarines, which incorporate the latest in stealth, intelligence gathering, and weapons systems technology,” the documents say. “Virginia-class submarines, with a per unit cost of approximately $3 billion, are currently in service with the United States Navy and are expected to remain in service until at least 2060.”

The Toebbes were arrested in Jefferson County, West Virginia, by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Saturday. They will appear in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on Tuesday. They have been charged in a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Atomic Energy Act.

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(SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, Calif.) — Remains found in a Southern California desert this weekend may belong to 30-year-old Lauren “El” Cho, who has been missing for months, authorities said.

The remains were recovered during a Saturday search for Cho “in the rugged terrain of the open desert of Yucca Valley,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.

The remains haven’t been identified and a cause of death hasn’t been released. The sheriff’s office said the identification process could take several weeks.

Cho, from New Jersey, was reported missing on June 28 “when she reportedly walked away” from the Yucca Valley home where she was staying, the sheriff’s department said.

The search for Cho was launched this summer and included planes searching the remote mountain terrain and canines scouring the area for evidence, the sheriff’s office said.

Cho’s family describes her as “a talented musician, an incredible baker, a hilarious and loyal friend, a strangely intuitive gift giver, and probably the coolest sister one could hope for.”

“We need her home,” the family wrote last month.

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(ALAMO, Ga.) — Investigators announced Sunday afternoon they had arrested the suspect wanted in connection with the killing of a central Georgia police officer who was shot outside his police department early Saturday, authorities said.

Dylan Harrison, 26, of Dudley, Georgia, was working his first shift as a part-time officer with the Alamo Police Department in Wheeler County when he was fatally shot around 1 a.m. Saturday, police said. Harrison was allegedly killed over an earlier confrontation that took place near the precinct a few hours prior, investigators said.

Damien Anthony Ferguson, 43, of Alamo, Georgia, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon following a nearly 38-hour manhunt, authorities said. He was arrested without incident while officers executed a search warrant of his residence, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said during a news conference Sunday evening.

Lindsay Wilkes, the special agent in charge for the GBI, told reporters that Harrison was involved in an altercation at a parking lot on Circle K across the street from the precinct Friday night. Harrison allegedly saw a man who was an associate of Ferguson commit a traffic violation and made contact with him, according to Wilkes.

The officer allegedly used his Taser on the suspect when he did not comply with Harrison’s orders, Wilkes said.

“It is believed that the ambush-style attack on Officer Harrison was retaliation for the incident and the arrest of the man Friday night,” Wilkes said.

Ferguson was charged with murder and with aggravated stalking related to a previous domestic incident, according to the GBI. Attorney information wasn’t immediately available.

Ferguson served eight years in prison after being convicted in Wheeler County of charges including aggravated assault of a peace officer, Georgia Department of Corrections records show. He was released in 2006.

Before his arrest, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation issued a “blue alert,” which indicates the search for a suspect who’s allegedly killed or injured an officer and hasn’t been apprehended, for Ferguson. An $18,500 reward was offered for information related to Ferguson’s arrest.

Harrison appears to be at least the fifth Georgia officer killed in the line of duty this year, according to Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks law enforcement deaths.

He was also a full-time agent with the Oconee Drug Task Force in Eastman, Georgia, and has been in law enforcement since 2018. He leaves behind his wife and 6-month-old baby.

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(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — A woman was killed and 14 other people were wounded early Sunday when at least three patrons pulled guns and opened fire at a popular bar in St. Paul, Minnesota, police said.

The mass shooting erupted inside the Seventh Street Truck Park bar in downtown St. Paul around 12:15 a.m., prompting a flood of 911 calls, according to authorities.

Steve Linders, a St. Paul Police Department spokesperson, said that when police officers arrived they found a “chaotic scene” with wounded people inside and outside the tavern.

“There were gunshot wound victims lying in the street outside the bar,” Linders said at a news conference early Sunday. “There were gunshot wound victims lying on the sidewalk outside the bar. There were gunshot wound victims lying on the floor inside the bar.”

St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said one of the victims, a woman in her 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene. Police were withholding her name pending an autopsy and notification of her relatives.

“My heart breaks for the woman who was killed, her loved ones and everyone else who was in that bar this morning,” Axtell said. “In an instant, they found themselves caught in a hellish situation. I want them to know that we have the best investigators in the country, and we won’t stop until we find the people responsible for this madness. We will do our part to hold them accountable.”

Three men wounded in the incident were taken into custody at local hospitals. Police identified the suspects as Terry Lorenzo Brown, Jr., 33, Devondre Trevon Phillips, 29, and Jeffrey Orlando Hoffman, 32. Charges have yet to be determined, but Axtell said the suspects will be booked into the Ramsey County jail as soon as they are discharged from the hospital.

“I hope these arrests bring a modicum of peace to all who’ve been affected by this morning’s tragedy,” Axtell said.

He said the investigation remained active and did not rule out the possibility of more arrests. A possible motive was not disclosed.

Investigators were still conducting interviews with witnesses and collecting evidence Sunday afternoon inside and outside the bar, which is about a block from the city’s Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild National Hockey League team.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said in a post on Twitter that the shooting has left his community “devastated.”

The fatal shooting marked the 32nd homicide in St. Paul this year, according to the police department’s crime statistics. In 2020, there were a total of 34 homicides in St. Paul, a 13.3% increase over 2019.

“As our St. Paul officers work to bring those responsible for these senseless acts into custody, our work to build more proactive safety strategies is more urgent than ever,” Carter said. “We will never accept violence in our community.”

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(NEW YORK) — When someone goes missing in Hawaii, local activist Ihilani Lasconia says that many in the island’s Native communities first suspect one thing: sex trafficking.

“Everybody knows that it’s happening, everybody knows that it’s a problem,” said Lasconia, an advocate for the feminist group AF3IRM. “It’s been so normalized — with over 100 years of colonization — so people feel defeated and don’t have the vocabulary to articulate these experiences.”

A new task force created by the state House aims to gather data on the number of missing Native Hawaiian women, and the impact of sex trafficking on Native populations on the islands.

Women and children in Hawaii are facing a widespread epidemic of violence and sex trafficking, according to House documents.

The task force is being led by the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — and is backed by state agencies, local authorities and other activist groups.

Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women, said that “if there’s no data, there’s no problem.”

That’s why she and her team are researching the concrete numbers of how many women and girls may be missing or being sex trafficked in the state.

Why the data matters

The few figures that exist, like research from the commission and Arizona State University, suggest that Native Hawaiian women are disproportionately represented among sex trafficking victims in the state.

Sixty-four percent of the sex trafficking victims identified in the commission’s 2020 study identified as having Native Hawaiian ancestry.

The report reads: “The overutilization of Native Hawaiians to meet sex buyer demand may be directly linked to structural economic coercion and vulnerabilities connected to land dispossession, exposure to sexual violence, hypersexualization, incarceration, cultural dislocation, intergenerational trauma, mental and emotional distress, racism, poverty, and going inequities.”

Nearly a quarter of the sex trafficking victims were sex trafficked by a family member, the research shows.

But there’s still a lot that researchers don’t know, Jabola-Carolus said.

Native Hawaiians have been left out of federal and state research into the issue of missing and murdered Native and Indigenous women — according to Jabola-Carolus, because recent federal efforts have been focused on researching crimes on tribal lands in the U.S., and Native Hawaiians don’t have the same land designation as other Indigenous communities.

Indigenous women and girls are victims of violence at far greater rates than any other population in the United States, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute.

Much of the research on these missing and murdered women have not included or researched Native Hawaiians, or the data does not offer the racial and ethnic nuances of these victims.

How did this happen?

The local activists who spoke with ABC News put the blame on tourism and lack of law enforcement resources for the widespread issue plaguing Native women across the islands.

“We can’t talk about the sexual violence that Native Hawaiians experience without talking about the tourism industry, because a lot of buyers come from either the United States, or internationally and they feed this market,” said Lasconia

Jabola-Carolus and Lasconia say there’s a mistrust in law enforcement, which they allege have never put the resources into finding missing Native women and girls — several of whom have gone missing in recent months with no leads.

ABC News contacted the Honolulu Police Department which wouldn’t comment on the matter.

They also say they believe the tourism industry often easily escapes accountability due to authority or temporary time in the islands.

“There’s nothing bad about Hawaii, right? It’s meant to be marketed to you as a blissful, problem-free place where you can leave your worries behind,” said Jabola-Carolus. “But for us, there is such a high cost.”

Now, the efforts to find these women — and prevent more women from going missing — are on.

Finding the missing

The disappearance of Gabby Petito, a white social media personality, and the media attention that followed her case has prompted calls to search for missing women from different communities across the United States. Activists, like Lasconia, say that missing women of color have been left behind, receiving little attention.

“There was so much conversation around this one white woman going missing … there were so many young Native Hawaiian girls [who] went missing within that same week, and not a single Amber Alert went out,” Lasconia said.

But local activists and organizers in Hawaii have long been working to fix this issue themselves.

Since the state passed its first anti-sex trafficking law in 2016, local agencies have been working to examine how widespread the issue of sex trafficking is.

Jabola-Carolus said that the Hawaii State Commission on the State of Women has been working to build trust with communities that have been heavily impacted by sexual “exploitation, neglect and criminalization.”

In 2019, SB1039 was signed into law.The Hawaiian law lets people vacate a prostitution conviction and expunge their criminal record as long as they haven’t been convicted of another offense within three years of the original offense. Before, the person would have to prove that they were a victim of sex trafficking to have the conviction erased.

In May 2020, the Department of the Attorney General established a human trafficking coordinator position for the state in an attempt to improve Hawaii’s anti-trafficking response.

The department plans on collaborating with law enforcement to increase the number of prosecutions, developing training programs for law enforcement and expanding outreach against these kinds of crimes.

Hawaii also passed a law in June to enhance the state’s ability to investigate and prosecute traffickers, “while improving outcomes for victims and survivors as they move through the justice system, which punishes sex buyers who exploit sex trafficking victims,” a press release from the office of Gov. David Y. Ige reads.

“These laws are the result of support and input from our partners in law enforcement, policy makers, community service providers, non-governmental organizations, and most importantly, those with lived experience,” said Deputy Attorney General and State Human Trafficking Coordinator Farshad M. Talebi in the statement.

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(NEW ORLEANS) — A Louisiana State Police officer was found dead after being shot in Ascension Parish Saturday night as law enforcement authorities have swept across the region looking for a suspect in the murder of one person and the shooting of several others.

The New Orleans branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was assisting on scene where the officer was found dead and confirmed the death was tied to “a manhunt for a gunman tied to multiple shootings in several parishes this weekend.”

“Today, Louisiana mourns the death of Master Trooper Adam Gaubert, a 19-year veteran of Louisiana State Police, who was ambushed while in his patrol unit and killed in the line of duty on Saturday.” Louisiana Gov John Bel Edwards said in a statement Sunday.

“Preliminary information indicates that Trooper Gaubert was shot and killed in the area in which an early morning homicide occurred,” Edwards said. “I am thankful for Louisiana State Police and all law enforcement agencies that worked together to capture the suspect in these homicides.”

Authorities announced overnight that they had caught the suspect, Matthew Mire, 31. He is suspected of breaking into a home and shooting two people in Prairieville around 3 a.m. on Saturday, according to the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Joseph Schexnayder, 43, and Pamela Adair, 37, were both taken to the hospital, where Adair later died. Schexnayder is in critical but stable condition, the sheriff’s office said.

Just hours earlier, in nearby Livingston Parish, Mire is suspected of breaking into another home and shooting two other people. In that incident a woman was shot twice in the arm and leg and a man was shot once in the arm. Both are expected to recover, Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said.

“The pair tells detectives that they heard a noise outside of their home. They then witnessed someone barging in through their front door and firing shots,” Ard said. “We do not believe this to be a random shooting. It’s believed Mire was familiar with the victims.”

Mire is believed to have stolen a blue 2013 Chevrolet Silverado from that scene, authorities said.

At 5 a.m., a Louisiana state trooper attempted to stop a pickup truck in East Baton Rouge Parish when they came under fire from the driver, authorities said. The officer was not struck, but law enforcement believes the driver was Mire.

Police are still trying to find a motive, authorities said.

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(HOUSTON) — A 3-year-old boy in Texas who has been missing since Wednesday has been found alive, officials said Saturday.

Christopher Ramirez was last seen playing with a neighbor’s dog while his mother unloaded groceries from her car outside their home in Grimes County Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. He followed the dog into the woods, and while the dog returned, he didn’t.

Search crews, including FBI personnel and community volunteers, had scoured the region with no signs of the boy for days.

Around noon local time Saturday, Texas EquuSearch, an organization that assists in search and recovery, announced that Christopher had been found. It shared a photo of him shirtless in a car, being cradled by a woman, though did not provide further details.

Christopher was found around 11 a.m. Saturday “alive and safe,” Grimes County Sheriff Don Sowell said in a Facebook post.

He was taken to Texas Children’s Hospital in the Woodlands, where he will be “observed and monitored for a period of time,” the sheriff said.

“A bit tired and dehydrated as well as hungry and in overall good spirits and healthy,” Sowell said.

Crews and community volunteers had been canvassing the wooded area, using drones and dogs to track Christopher’s scent, authorities said. On Friday, Sowell said they had expanded the search perimeter and would continue to search through the night and weekend.

Sowell had said there was no evidence of foul play, and family members were not persons of interest.

The boy’s mother, Araceli Nunez, had publicly pleaded for help in finding Christopher.

“I am asking you all to please help and find my son. I don’t know anything about him, and a lot of time has passed. I don’t know what to do. Please everyone help me,” she told reporters in Spanish at a press conference Thursday.

“I’m desperate and my heart has a hole in it. Please bring back my son, please help me,” she said.

The “humble and kind man” who found Christopher has requested anonymity, Sowell said on Facebook.

“I had several good visits with him and thanked him for being there,” the sheriff said. “He replied that God told him at Bible study yesterday evening to go look for him and he would find him. This morning the man did just that and the rest is a happy ending to this story.”

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(NEW YORK) — It has been a particularly perilous week for federal law enforcement.

On Monday, DEA Special Agent Michael Garbo, a 16-year veteran of the agency, was shot and killed during an operation in Tucson, Arizona.

What started as a routine investigation with DEA agents following up on tips that illegal drugs were being transported on an Amtrak train from California turned deadly as agents closed in on a suspected drug dealer.

The Tucson incident was one of three shootings in the past week that left at least 4 agents killed or wounded. As of Oct. 5, 55 law enforcement officers had been killed or wounded so far this year, approaching the five-year high set in 2018.

Another agent was also shot but not killed in the operation.

On Tuesday an ATF agent was shot and critically wounded in Nashville after a suspect opened fire team of agents looking to arrest him as he sat in his parked in his car outside a diner.

The dramatic scene was captured on security camera video. According to court records, the suspect, who died in the incident, was the target of a drug investigation.

Earlier this week, an FBI agent was shot and critically wounded while serving an arrest warrant with the U.S. Marshals in Racine, Wisconsin, according to police. They did not specify what the agent was doing other than categorizing it as “law enforcement activity.”

FBI Agents Association President Brian O’Hare said the association stands with those law enforcement agents who were shot at.

“The FBI Agents Association stands with these courageous agents, and our thoughts and prayers are with them and with their families,” O’Hare said in a statement to ABC News. “The FBIAA hopes that all Americans will join us in condemning these abhorrent acts of violence.”

And last Friday in Louisiana, a deputy U.S. marshal died after he was in a car accident while on duty.

Law enforcement leaders say these incidents show just how dangerous the profession can be.

“These tragedies are yet another painful reminder of what everyone in this audience knows firsthand: violent crime — particularly gun violence — has reached epidemic levels,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told the Major City Chiefs Association during its annual conference on Wednesday.

Acting Deputy Director of the ATF Tom Chittum told ABC News in an interview it has been a hard week for federal law enforcement.

“This has been an incredibly difficult week for federal law enforcement,” he said. “Our hearts and thoughts and prayers go out to the families, the friends and to those officers that have been subjected to this gun violence.”

He said law enforcement is a dangerous profession, investigating the most serious violent offenders, but as of late it’s been more dangerous.

“I think they represent in a lot of cases, a callous disregard for life, no respect for them law,” Chittum said. “We have seen an increase in assaults on law enforcement officers that goes hand-in-hand with just the increase in violent crime we’ve seen across the country. It’s a dangerous time out there and increasingly we see more rounds being fired, often in the ambush style attacks.”

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(DALLAS) — A panel of judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a temporary administrative stay Friday night that will allow state courts in Texas to continue accept lawsuits under the state’s restrictive abortion law.

President Joe Biden’s Justice Department had sued the state of Texas last month after it instituted a ban on abortions once doctors detect cardiac activity — about six weeks into a pregnancy and often before a woman would even know she was pregnant. The law, which is civil instead of criminal, allows anyone to sue someone they “reasonably believed” provided an illegal abortion or assisted someone in getting it in the state.

The ruling late Friday will again reinstate the law, at least as the appeals process continues to unfold.

“IT IS ORDERED that Appellant’s emergency motion to stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal is temporarily held in abeyance pending further order by this motions panel,” the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its ruling. “Appellee is directed to respond to the emergency motion by 5 pm on Tuesday, October 12, 2021.”

“IT IS ORDERED that Appellant’s alternative motion for a temporary administrative stay pending the court’s consideration of the emergency motion is GRANTED,” the court, comprised of Judges Carl E. Stewart, Catharina Haynes and James C. Ho, added.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman had issued an emergency injunction barring enforcement of the controversial new abortion law and effectively allowing abortions after six weeks again.

The state of Texas immediately appealed that injunction to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In addition to the emergency injunction, Pitman had denied Texas’ request to put a pause on his ruling while the state appeals it. But that was undone Friday.

“That other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion is theirs to decide; this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right,” Pitman wrote.

In the meantime, as the appellate court waited to rule Friday, some abortion providers in Texas had already begun to offer services again to people past six weeks into pregnancy.

“We reached out to some of the patients that we had on a waiting list to come in to have abortions today, folks whose pregnancies did have cardiac activity earlier in September,” Whole Woman’s Health founder Amy Hagstrom Miller said during a press briefing with the Center for Reproductive Rights Thursday. “And we were able to see a few people as early as, 8, 9 this morning, right away when we opened the clinic.”

The 113-page ruling from Pitman Wednesday was scathing in targeting the state in how he says it schemed to evade judicial review in its implementation of this law.

“A person’s right under the Constitution to choose to obtain an abortion prior to fetal viability is well established,” Pitman wrote. “Fully aware that depriving its citizens of this right by direct state action would be flagrantly unconstitutional, the State contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme to do just that.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Civil rights charges will not be pursued against the Wisconsin police officer who shot Jacob Blake last year, partially paralyzing him, the Department of Justice announced Friday.

Kenosha Police Officer Rusten Sheskey, who is white, fired seven times at Blake, who is Black, on Aug. 23, 2020, after responding to a report of a domestic dispute, authorities said.

Following an investigation, federal prosecutors said the evidence obtained was insufficient to prove Sheskey “willfully used excessive force,” the DOJ said in a statement.

Investigators reviewed police reports, law enforcement accounts, witness statements, witness affidavits, photographs, videos and more of the incident, which was captured on a witness’ cellphone and sparked days of large-scale protests in Kenosha.

“After a careful and thorough review, a team of experienced federal prosecutors determined that insufficient evidence exists to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the KPD officer willfully violated the federal criminal civil rights statutes,” the DOJ said.

The DOJ said it has informed representatives of Blake’s family about its decision.

ABC News spoke with Blake’s father, Jacob Blake Sr., shortly after the DOJ’s announcement. He said he had not yet heard about the decision.

“I was expecting more from the administration than this. I was expecting much more than this,” he said. “I believe that we’re in a systematic racist system, and that this system was not set up for us. So I didn’t expect the system to work for us, because it never works for us. It wasn’t made for us.”

Blake’s father said he disagrees that Sheskey didn’t willfully use excessive force.

“Seven times in the back is excessive,” he said. “I don’t care if you’re a dog. Seven times in the back, that’s not excessive?”

The shooting occurred as officers were attempting to detain Blake, who had a warrant out for his arrest. After Blake walked to the front of his vehicle toward the driver’s side door, Sheskey fired his gun seven times toward his back.

Blake was struck by six of the bullets and is now paralyzed from the waist down.

An unfolded knife was found on the driver’s side floorboard of Blake’s vehicle, authorities said.

Kenosha County District Attorney Mike Graveley also declined to file any criminal charges against Sheskey related to the incident last year, saying at the time the officer was justified in his use of force and was acting in self-defense because Blake was armed with a knife.

Sheskey was not disciplined for his use of force by the Kenosha Police Department either, which said he was acting “within policy.”

In March, Blake filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Sheskey, accusing the officer of using “excessive and unnecessary” force.

“We believe that this lawsuit will help establish accountability,” B’Ivory LaMarr, one of Blake’s attorneys, told ABC News at the time.

ABC News’ Stephanie Wash contributed to this report.

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