Air Force employee catfished into sharing military secrets

In what may be the most obvious catfishing scam of all time, a contractor for the Air Force was caught sharing military secrets with an individual posing as a Ukrainian woman on a foreign dating app.  

David Franklin Slater, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was serving as a US Air Force civilian employee at the time of the catfishing, was arrested Saturday on three charges of conspiracy and disclosing national defense information. 

Slater held a top-secret security clearance from August 2021 until April 2022 which gave him access to briefings about the Russo-Ukraine War. Around March 2022, sixty-two-year-old Slater began “willfully, improperly and unlawfully” sharing defense information with his Ukrainian girlfriend, whom the indictment names as his co-conspirator. Slater had signed a non-disclosure agreement a year earlier. 

Cockburn has never been catfished, but he’s watched enough 90-Day Fiancé to know it when he sees it. Here are three simple rules Slater should have followed to know he was being courted by a foreign national. If you have security clearance and she’s asking for military secrets, you’re being catfished. If she’s looking for weapons and NATO’s intervention during an ongoing war, you’re being catfished. If you’re using a foreign dating app to text a woman who calls you “beloved,” you’re being catfished. 

The indictment includes nine bizarrely worded messages from the co-conspirator over two months that should have tipped Slater off. In the first message from March 7, she asked, “American Intelligence says that already 100% of Russian troops are located on the territory of Ukraine. Do you think this information can be trusted?” Four days later, she followed up: “Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting.” Over a month later, the co-conspirator was still asking Slater for information about the war. “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very unpleasant “surprise” for Putin! Will you tell me?” 

If none of these clues were enough, Slater’s purported Ukrainian girlfriend all but revealed her game plan, calling him her “secret informant love” and her “secret agent.” 

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said Slater will be held accountable for putting the country’s classified information at risk. 

“Mr. Slater, an Air Force civilian employee and retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel, knowingly transmitted classified national defense information to another person in blatant disregard for the security of his country and his oath to safeguard its secrets,” Olsen said.

Slater is making his first court appearance on Tuesday in the District of Nebraska. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of ten years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000 for each of the three counts he was charged on. If found guilty, Slater will be cruelly isolated from gorgeous Ukrainian women.