An employee of a defense contractor was arrested last week for trying to sell secrets to a person he believed to be an agent of the Russian government.
Gregory Allen Justice was arrested on federal charges of economic espionage and violations of the Arms Export Control Act after he tried to sell sensitive satellite information to an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign spy, the Department of Justice said in a news release on Friday.
Justice, who lives in Culver City, California, was employed by a cleared defense contractor and worked on engineering military and commercial satellites. The Justice Department did not specify which defense contractor employed Justice, though the Los Angeles Times reported that he worked for Boeing Satellite Systems in El Segundo, which is about 10 miles from Culver City.
Boeing receives billions in federal contracts from the Defense Department each year.
Justice was arrested on Thursday and appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that afternoon. The judge ordered that he be detained pending trial.
"Mr. Justice allegedly placed his own interests of greed over our national security by providing information on sensitive U.S. technologies to a person whom he believed was a foreign agent," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin said in a statement Friday. "In the wrong hands, this information could be used to harm the United States and its allies."
According to the criminal complaint, Justice allegedly provided the undercover agent with materials that contained trade secrets and "technical data that required an export license to be exported from the United States pursuant to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations."
Justice began meeting with the undercover agent–who he believed to be a representative of a Russian intelligence service–in February, the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint states. He sold materials that he stole from his employer to the agent on multiple occasions for the price of $500 or $1,000.
Justice worked for the defense contractor since 2000 and was assigned to a team building and testing U.S. military satellites, including those for the Air Force, Navy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
If found guilty, Justice faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in federal prison for the espionage charge and a maximum of 20 years for violating the Arms Export Control Act.
The case was investigated by both the FBI and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
"Our nation’s security depends on the honesty and integrity of those entrusted with our technological secrets," U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker of the Central District of California said Friday. "In this case, the defendant sought to undermine our national security by attempting to sell proprietary and controlled information about satellites to a foreign government’s intelligence service. Fortunately, law enforcement agents were able to timely and effectively intervene to protect this critical technology."