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Engineer Attempts to Play The ‘Spy Game’ ; Wins 5 Years in Jail

  • Writer: Jess Filippone
    Jess Filippone
  • Sep 19, 2017
  • 2 min read

An engineer from Culver City has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for stealing military secrets and attempting to sell them to a Russian agent, who was actually someone in the FBI.

Gregory Justice, 50, pleaded guilty to stealing details about commercial and military satellites. Justice was also awarded a few extra months in the slammer from U.S. District Judge George H. Wu, who said he found the crimes “extremely troublesome” because he was willing to sell the information to the Russian government.

Justice planned to sell the details on the commercial and civilian satellites for $3,500.00. The series of meetings between the agent and Justice took place in 2016, according to CNBC.

The documents Justice handed over to the FBI agent contained technical data the government said “was subject to federal control restrictions”.

Thom Mrozak, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, considers this case “kind of a spy case,” making reference to “The Americans,” which tells the story of a pair of Russian spies living in the United States during the Cold War.

The LA Times reported that Justice and the agent actually discussed how they “wanted to try to build the type of relationship depicted in the TV show” according to court records.

“Unlike a reality television series, selling secrets to a foreign government is not entertaining, but in the wrong hands, threatens national security and puts American lives at risk,” Danny Kennedy, the acting assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, told the LA Times.

According to CNBC, Judge Wu, rejected prosecutors’ request for more years behind bars after determining that there “wasn’t sufficient evidence to support a government allegation” that Justice was also had been plotting to use a potent drug to murder his wife.

Despite the lengths of this crime, Mrozak claims the extent of the case still did not meet the threshold for treason.

“In the many years that I have been here with the Justice Department in Los Angeles, I have only seen it (treason) used once,” Mrozak told KFI’s Kristopher Ankarlo. “And I believe that it was only used once over the past fifty or so years.”

Mrozak told KFI that he believes that no national security interests were compromised. The maximum penalty for selling sensitive information has a maximum penalty of up to 35 years in prison.

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