'It's time to continue ur support,' a foreign contact wrote to Abraham Teklu Lemma in 2022, court files said. 'Roger that!' he allegedly replied.
— A State Department IT contractor was charged with espionage after investigators alleged he sent classified documents from sensitive federal systems to foreign government contacts — and likely gave those contacts access to his U.S. government account, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
During this period, investigators say Lemma made several trips to the country and has familial contacts there. The charges against Lemma and his work on Ethiopia's behalf were first reported byLemma allegedly used an encrypted messaging app last year to send a foreign contact classified national defense information including maps, photographs, rebel group activity and satellite imagery, prosecutors wrote in court documents.
And between April 12 and June 21, court documents say Lemma's electronic accounts were accessed from Ethiopia 31 times including during periods of time when Lemma was not in the country, indicating he allegedly provided another person in a foreign country access to his accounts, the documents said. After Lemma came to the attention of federal investigators, court records say he was observed a number of times last month using his classified State Department account to access top secret intelligence reports without authorization. He was also seen taking notes on or copying the classified information into Word documents. And multiple times last month, according to prosecutors, Lemma allegedly stored the sensitive information onto a disc and illegally transported it to his Maryland residence.
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