Mom accused of kidnapping daughter, peddling US defense secrets to Russia gets prison
.jpg "Elizabeth Jo Shirley was sentenced to 11 years in prison after prosecutors accused her of stealing top secret government information and kidnapping her daughter.")
An Air Force veteran and former government worker accused of taking her 6-year-old daughter to Mexico along with top secret security documents was sentenced to prison Monday.
Elizabeth Jo Shirley, 47, was ordered to spend 11 years in federal prison after she pleaded guilty to charges of “international parental kidnapping” and stealing national defense information last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia said Monday in a news release.
As part of the guilty plea, Shirley had faced up to 13 years and $500,000 in fines.
“Shirley betrayed the trust of the American people when she took classified information from her work with the Intelligence Community,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers for the National Security Division said in the release. “She then sought to profit from her betrayal by seeking to sell this information to Russia, one of America’s foremost adversaries, in order to further her criminal abduction of her daughter.”
A court-appointed lawyer representing Shirley declined to comment Tuesday, and court documents pertaining to her sentencing weren’t publicly available.
Shirley served in the U.S. Air Force from 1994 to 2000, where she worked with the National Security Agency and was given her first Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance, prosecutors said. She served in the U.S. Navy Reserves after leaving active duty.
Prosecutors said Shirley worked for multiple federal agencies for 11 years starting in 2001 — including the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force.
She also worked for at least five defense contractors and was issued top secret security clearance at different times during the course of her employment. At one point, prosecutors said Shirley had access to classified information regarding nuclear weapons through her work with the Department of Energy.
Shirley is accused of removing classified defense information starting in the 1990s and storing it at her home and in a storage unit she rented in West Virginia, according to court filings.
Caught in Mexico
In May 2019, prosecutors said Shirley went to Mexico to scout out how to cross the border with her daughter. Two months later, instead of returning her daughter to the girl’s father and stepmother, who have primary custody, Shirley and the child traveled from Hedgesville, West Virginia, to Mexico City.
The pair were in Mexico for almost a month before Shirley was arrested at their hotel by Mexican authorities under a West Virginia State Police warrant, prosecutors said.
She had in her possession a laptop, two tablets, five cell phones, four SIM cards, three external hard drives, four thumb drives and nine SD cards, according to the plea agreement.
“In traveling to Mexico with these items, Ms. Shirley intended to make contact with representatives of the Russian Government through its embassy located in Mexico City, and offer her skill set in exchange for money and resettlement in a country that would not extradite her to the United States,” prosecutors said.
In one of the notes she is accused of drafting to Russian officials, prosecutors said Shirley urged them to take her “requests seriously.”
“Americans would never dangle their top Intelligence Community [Country A] Cyber expert and her child,” she wrote, according to court documents. “I think that after reviewing my credentials ... you will be pleasantly surprised.”
Shirley asked in the same note for “items shipped from the USA related to my life’s work before they are seized or destroyed,” prosecutors said. A later message allegedly included requests for money, housing and new identities for herself and her daughter.
Arrest and sentencing
Shirley was put on a plane to New York City after her arrest, and the 6-year-old was returned to her father.
The government charged Shirley with retaining defense information and international parental kidnapping on Aug. 29, 2019. She was booked at a West Virginia jail a few days later.
Court filings show Shirley waived her right to preliminary and detention hearings after the arrest, and a federal judge granted prosecutors’ request to keep her in custody while the case was ongoing. The government said she was a flight risk and posed a “serious risk” of obstructing justice if she was released.
Shirley pleaded guilty last year, McClatchy News previously reported.
A federal judge sentenced her Monday to more than 8 years in prison for the government documents charge followed by three years of supervised release and a $100 fee. Shirley was sentenced to an additional 3 years in prison for the kidnapping charge with one year of supervised release and a $100 fee.
