(West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority via AP)

The nuclear engineer accused of attempting to sell nuclear submarine secrets to what he thought was a foreign nation was a spycraft aficionado who fantasized about sharing a bottle of wine with his handler like “two old friends.”

In a plot intercepted by the FBI, Jonathan Toebbe, who worked for the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program, and his wife Diana have been hit with espionage-related charges following alleged efforts to sell secrets to an unnamed foreign government in exchange for thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency.