Ex-NSA Employee gets 22 Years in Prison for Trying to Sell U.S. Secrets to Russia

An ex-NSA employee was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison for trying to send classified documents to Russia, sending a clear message to those who protect sensitive data.

FBI Director Christopher Wray noted that, “This sentence should serve as a stark warning to all those entrusted with protecting national defense information that there are consequences to betraying that trust.”

For a brief time between June 6 and July 1, 2022, Jareh Sebastian Dalke, a 32-year-old Colorado Springs resident, was employed as an information systems security designer. At this time, he was privy to extremely private information.

Dalke reportedly made contact with someone he thought was a Russian agent sometime between August and September of that year, despite his brief employment at the intelligence agency. He had no idea, though, that this person was actually an FBI undercover agent.

To demonstrate his “legitimate access and willingness to share,” Dalke forwarded to the purported Russian agent excerpts from three top-secret National Defense Information (NDI) documents that he had obtained while working for the company. He sent these pieces via an encrypted email account.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke requested $85,000 in order to grant him complete access to every file he possessed. Persuading his contact that the material would be useful to Russia, he pledged to provide more documents when he got back to D.C.

On September 28, 2022, at Denver’s Union Station, Dalke transferred five files to the alleged Russian spy using a laptop computer. After that, he was arrested by law enforcement. In October 2023, the defendant entered a guilty plea to the charges.

The US Department of Justice disclosed, “As part of his plea agreement, Dalke admitted that he willfully transmitted files to the FBI online covert employee with the intent and reason to believe the information would be used to injure the United States and to benefit Russia.”