LOS ANGELES \u2014 A California engineer who worked for a defense contractor was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for selling sensitive satellite information to an undercover FBI employee he thought was a Russian intelligence agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. District Judge George H. Wu handed down the term for 50-year-old Gregory Allen Justice of Culver City, an engineer on military and commercial satellite programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Justice pleaded guilty in May to trying to commit economic espionage and attempting to send restricted information out of the United States in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Justice \u201cunderstood that the information he provided would be sent \u2018back to Moscow and they will review this,\u2019 \u201d according to court documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Justice received $3,500 during a series of meetings and sent most of that money and thousands more to an \u201conline paramour\u201d he never met, the documents said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Los Angeles U.S. attorney\u2019s office said that during one of those meetings, Justice and the undercover agent talked about developing a relationship like one in the FX television series \u201cThe Americans,\u201d which depicted two Soviet secret agents living in the guise of an American couple in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a final meeting, Justice offered to take the undercover FBI operative on a tour of the defense contractor\u2019s production facility where he could wear special glasses that would allow him to make photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Danny Kennedy, acting assistant director in charge of the FBI\u2019s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement that unlike a TV series, \u201cselling secrets to a foreign government is not entertaining, but in the wrong hands, threatens national security and puts American lives at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Acting United States Attorney Sandra R. Brown said the defendant\u2019s actions posed a threat to national security but in the end there was no damage to U.S. security interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gregory Allen Justice of Culver City, California, has pleaded guilty to trying to commit economic espionage and attempting to send restricted information out of the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":33400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":23,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"8":{"categories":["doj-fbi","federal-oversight","newsletters","daily-brief"],"primary_category":"doj-fbi"},"9":{"categories":["daily-brief","newsletters","satellites","c2-comms","home"],"primary_category":"daily-brief"}}},"categories":[162,163,36,23],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2916],"class_list":["post-21495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-show-daily","category-military-space-report","category-newsletters","category-space"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"BMM6IF74RFFNHL7IJAND7PF5ZE","arc_canonical_url":"\/space\/2017\/09\/18\/man-sentenced-for-trying-to-sell-satellite-secrets-to-russia\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n