St. Louis, MO - JEFFEREY GOEBEL of Lake St. Louis, MO, was sentenced to two years of probation, a $5000 fine, $1000 restitution and 40 hours of community service. He pled guilty on May 2 to one felony count of illegally removing records from a government office. He appeared today for sentencing before United States District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig.

Goebel had been the Director of the Office of Commercial Partnerships for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). Generally, NGA, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense, analyzes imagery of various geographic locations on Earth in support of national security needs, providing data to the intelligence community and United States Military regarding the physical features and terrain of specific locations on Earth. As part of his job duties at NGA, on February 18, 2010, Goebel received a spreadsheet that compared the hourly proposals of several government contractors against NGA’s established costs. As such, the spreadsheet contained valuable property of the United States, including hourly proposals of several government contractors and NGA’s internal comparisons of the data. The spreadsheet was provided to Goebel with a description that it contained proprietary and sensitive information of the agency and various contractors and was for official use only.

Goebel retired from NGA on June 3, 2010. Shortly thereafter, he started employment as a Vice-President at a private company that was a commercial provider of high resolution earth imagery to public and private customers, including NGA. Generally, this private company was interested in obtaining more work from NGA. During November 2010, Goebel shared the NGA spreadsheet with a co-worker at this private company. Shortly thereafter, the private company terminated Goebel’s employment, disclosed these events to NGA and returned the company’s only copy of the spreadsheet to NGA on December 3, 2010.

This case was investigated by the Office of Inspector General for NGA and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service of the United States Department of Defense.