Former NSA worker sentenced to 20+ years in prison for selling secrets to undercover agent

A former National Security Agency (NSA) worker was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison after he was charged for selling classified information to a Russian official, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 32, of Colorado Springs, Colo., was sentenced to 262 months in prison on Monday after he pleaded guilty to six counts of attempting to share classified national defense information to an agent with the Russian Federation, federal prosecutors said.

Dalke worked as an information systems security designer for the NSA in 2022 and told prosecutors that between August and September of that year, he used an encrypted email account to give excerpts from three classified documents to an individual he thought was a Russian agent. The person was an undercover FBI employee, the DOJ said.

The documents that included the excerpts were classified as “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” prosecutors added.

Dalke requested $85,000 in return for the information, telling the undercover agent that the information was valuable to Russia and that he would share additional information in the future, per the DOJ.

Using a laptop computer and instructions provided by the purported Russian agent, Dalke transferred another five files, four of which had classified information. The fifth file was a letter that stated he looked “forward to our friendship and shared benefit.”

“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,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore said he could have issued a longer sentence, calling the 262-month sentence “mercy,” The Associated Press reported. The sentence length was the same as requested by federal prosecutors, though higher than Dalke’s attorneys’ request for a 14-year sentence.

“This was blatant. It was brazen and, in my mind, it was deliberate,” Moore said, per the AP. ” It was a betrayal, and it was as close to treasonous as you can get.”

Dalke in court said he was “remorseful and ashamed,” and told Moore he dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.