Jessica Lynn Quintana, a former employee with a contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, N.M. to stealing classified information from the lab and is now facing a maximum of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine. She has lost her security clearance and could also receive up to five years of probation.
Quintana was hired to archive classified information at the multi-disciplinary scientific laboratory in northern New Mexico. According to a release from the Department of Justice, she admitted in her plea that on July 27, 2006, she was working in a secure area at the lab and printed pages of classified documents and downloaded other classified information onto a thumb drive. She put the stolen data in a backpack and headed for home. Quintana told government agents that she stored the pages and thumb drive at her home, which was outside of her authorization limits. On October 17, officers of the Los Alamos Police Department executed a state search warrant on Quintana"s home and seized the thumb drive containing classified information. Three days later, the FBI seized the classified printouts during the execution of a federal search warrant on her home.