The investigation into a Chevy Chase Village resident charged with espionage leads all the way to a safe deposit box allegedly filled with gold coins in southern California, even as he remains in jail.

Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia indicated that Stewart Nozette, 52, of the 100 block of Grafton Street, may have been gathering classified information on national security for some time because he might see a pay-off at some point.

The former federal research scientist for NASA, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense was arrested Oct. 19 and charged with two counts related to attempted espionage and trying to sell secrets related to national security. Nozette was allegedly trying to sell the information to agents he believed were working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

Even though Nozette was scheduled to be sentenced for federal tax evasion and fraud charges later this month, he still appeared set on spying for Israel, according to federal prosecutors. The death penalty is still a possible punishment if Nozette is convicted.

He was denied bond on the espionage charges last week by Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. No trial date has been set.

Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's office for the District of Columbia argued that Nozette was too much of a flight risk to be released from custody before his trial. They cited his interest in obtaining an alias and an Israeli passport from Mossad.

"The classified information that Nozette is willing to recreate from memory poses an exceptionally grave risk to the national security of the United States," Channing D. Phillips, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote in support of detaining Nozette before trial.

But his defense counsel, John Kiyonaga of Alexandria, Va., claimed Nozette did not have the resources or connections to any foreign intelligence service to successfully flee the country.

"The Israeli Embassy turned away Jonathan Pollard when he sought refuge there — and, unlike Defendant, he had actually spied for Israel," Kiyonaga wrote in court documents, referring to an American-born intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy convicted of spying for Israel.

Nozette indicated that eventually he wanted $2 million for the information he thought he was giving to Israeli intelligence, according to federal prosecutors.

They also allege that Nozette claimed he used multiple safe deposit boxes to store classified information he thought would be valuable at some point. In one safe deposit box in La Jolla, Calif. that prosecutors claim Nozette had rented since July 2008, FBI investigators found three computer hard drives, eight videotapes, and $80,000 worth of savings bonds and gold coins.

A safe deposit box may have been one of the less creative ways Nozette tried to conceal money. When he met for a final time with FBI agents in a hotel room Oct. 19 just before he was arrested, Nozette received $10,000 from undercover agents and then attempted to conceal the money in the tank of the room's toilet, prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors said because Nozette provided information about early warning systems and means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, the death penalty has not been eliminated as a possibility, said U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Ben Friedman.

"It's technically a capital offense, and it's under review," he said.

Espionage is not the only legal problem facing Nozette. He has already pleaded guilty to using the company he founded, Alliance for Competitive Technology, to defrauding various government agencies and filing false tax returns from 2000 to 2004, according to the criminal investigation division of the IRS in Washington, D.C.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 18 on one count of tax evasion and one count of defrauding the federal government. Nozette reached a plea deal in December 2008 through which he agreed to serve anywhere from 24 to 37 months in jail and pay a $265,000 fine, although the details of his plea deal have yet to be approved by a judge. The IRS was not in contact with the FBI prior to Nozette's Oct. 19 arrest, according to Deborah Trotter, a spokeswoman with the criminal investigation division of the IRS.

Citing the sensitive nature of the FBI's investigation into Nozette, Trotter said in an interview, "There kind of was this wall put up in between the two investigations."

It is unclear if Nozette would begin serving jail time immediately after his scheduled Nov. 18 sentencing. In court documents, prosecutors alleged Nozette told undercover FBI agents that he liked the idea of an "escape route to have a place outside the country" so he could spy for Israel.