A Sharon, Massachusetts, man pleaded guilty Friday to willfully retaining US national defense information to which he had access through his job at a defense contractor.
According to a press release by the US Department of Justice, Ahmedelhadi Yassin Serageldin, 66, admitted to keeping classified national defense information he obtained from his former employer – defense contractor Raytheon – in his home. Serageldin pleaded guilty before Chief United States District Judge Patti B. Saris on Friday.
During the plea hearing, the unidentified prosecutor said that federal agents discovered thousands of physical and electronic documents that belong to Raytheon and the US Department of Defense while conducting a search warrant in Serageldin's home. The files were classified at the “secret” level.
Serageldin, who is an Egyptian-born American citizen, was indicted and arrested in November 2018 for “misleading conduct with intent to hinder, delay, or prevent communications to a law enforcement officer relating to the commission or possible commission of a federal offense,” the press release explains.
The indictment claimed that Serageldin was employed as a systems engineer at Raytheon in Massachusetts from August 1997 until May 2017, when he was fired. During his employment at the firm, he had a secret-level security clearance because he worked on defense contracts related to US military radar technology.
Raytheon began investigating…
