The U.S. Justice Department said that a former member of the National Security Agency (NSA) was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison on Monday for trying to send confidential material to a person he believed to be a Russian agent but who was actually an FBI undercover agent.
In October, 32-year-old Colorado Springs resident Jareh Sebastian Dalke entered a guilty plea to six charges of attempting to transmit classified information related to national defence. On Monday, he received a sentence of 21 years and 10 months in prison.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement, “This sentence should serve as a stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defence information that there are consequences to betraying that trust.”
Dalke said that between August and September 2022, he sent portions of three classified materials to a person he thought to be a Russian agent via an encrypted email account, proving his “legitimate access and willingness to share,” according to the Justice Department.
According to the department, Dalke, an information systems security designer at the NSA, requested $85,000 in exchange for all of the data he had.
