Ex-FBI Agent Admits Stealing $2.47M in Crypto From 35 Bureau Cases

A former FBI agent pleaded guilty on Thursday to wire fraud and money laundering for stealing roughly $2.47 million in cryptocurrency using wallet credentials the bureau had itself collected during investigations, the Justice Department said.

Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, entered the plea in federal court in Alexandria. He faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on March 4, 2027, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

How did he pull it off?

Yaroch worked at the FBI's Boston Division from 2017 to early 2025 on a squad investigating an unnamed "adversarial nation state," prosecutors said. He then moved to the bureau's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, which gave him access to FBI systems holding crypto credentials gathered in the course of investigations.

Beginning no later than December 2024, he used that access to drain wallets controlled by subjects of other investigations, by nation-state actors, and at least one wallet the FBI had created for an operation. Prosecutors counted roughly 100 fraudulent transfers tied to 35 separate FBI investigations. He swapped the stolen funds into other cryptocurrencies and layered transactions to obscure their origin, then spent some of the proceeds on credit cards, car payments and other loans, the plea documents state.

The statement of facts filed with the plea says his conduct compromised multiple investigations into criminal groups and nation-state adversaries, along with sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection — operational damage that extends well beyond the dollar loss.

What did the confession and the searches reveal?

Yaroch turned himself in. On July 29, he broke down while telling a former colleague at the Justice Department's National Security Division that he had made "very poor decisions" involving crypto wallets, an FBI affidavit says. He then self-reported to FBI headquarters, saying he had grown frustrated that the bureau "could not or would not act" against an adversary's crypto accounts and had decided to "take matters into his own hands."

At that point, Yaroch estimated he had made only 10 to 12 transfers worth under $1 million — far short of the figures he ultimately admitted. Two days later, agents searching his home seized a Trezor hardware wallet, three passports and a slip of paper bearing seed phrases.

His Kraken account held about $188,600, mostly in U.S. dollars and USDC, with smaller amounts of Squid (QUID) and Bitcoin. Another $933,800 sat in Suilend, a lending protocol on the Sui blockchain, accessed through the Slush wallet app. Yaroch told agents he picked Suilend "simply because he liked that the logo was a water droplet."

Agents moved about $925,000 from those accounts into government-controlled wallets. The roughly $165,600 held as U.S. dollars on Kraken could not be transferred the same way.

Did he plan to flee?

He did, prosecutors said. Yaroch asked ChatGPT how to maximize investment profits and where to live in the European Union. After the chatbot suggested buying a vineyard in Portugal, he gave Portuguese lawyers power of attorney to obtain a tax identification number and arranged to travel there in September.

Decrypt first reported the charges in August. Yaroch remains free pending sentencing, with the March 4, 2027 hearing set to fix restitution and the prison term for one of the most serious insider credential abuses the bureau has prosecuted.