A former FBI agent has pleaded guilty to stealing approximately $2.47 million in cryptocurrency using wallet credentials the bureau had collected during its own investigations, according to the Justice Department. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced the plea on Thursday, November 5.

Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, entered guilty pleas to wire fraud and money laundering in federal court in Alexandria. He faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 4, 2027.

Prosecutors said Yaroch made roughly 100 fraudulent transfers using credentials drawn from 35 separate FBI investigations, compromising cases involving criminal groups and nation-state adversaries. The case turns on insider access rather than an external breach: wallet credentials gathered during investigations function as direct keys to the funds they unlock, making the bureau's own custody of that material central to the charges.

Former FBI agent Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, pled guilty today to wire fraud and money laundering related to using his access to steal cryptocurrency. @FBIWFO

— U.S. Attorney EDVA (@EDVAnews) November 5, 2026

Role Inside the FBI

Yaroch worked at the FBI's Boston Division from 2017 to early 2025, assigned to a squad investigating an unnamed "adversarial nation state," according to prosecutors. He later moved to the bureau's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, where he had access to FBI systems holding crypto credentials gathered during investigations.

Beginning no later than December 2024, he used that access to steal cryptocurrency from wallets controlled by subjects of other investigations and by nation-state actors, as well as from at least one wallet the FBI had created for an operation, prosecutors said. He swapped the stolen funds into other cryptocurrencies and moved them through further transactions to hide their origin, using some of the proceeds to pay off credit cards, car payments and other loans.

According to the plea agreement's statement of facts, Yaroch's conduct compromised multiple FBI investigations into criminal groups and nation-state adversaries, as well as sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection.

A ChatGPT-Assisted Plan to Leave the Country

Yaroch had also begun laying the groundwork for a new life abroad. He asked ChatGPT how to maximize profits from investments and where to live in the European Union, and after the chatbot suggested buying a vineyard in Portugal, he gave Portuguese lawyers power of attorney to obtain a tax identification number on his behalf, prosecutors said. He had arranged to travel to Portugal in September.

Self-Report and Seizure

Despite the relocation plans, the case came to light after 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, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case. 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 the time, Yaroch said he had made about 10 to 12 transfers worth under $1 million, far below the totals reflected in his plea.

Agents who searched his home two days later seized a Trezor hardware wallet, a device used to store crypto offline, along with three passports and a slip of paper bearing seed phrases — recovery phrases that can be used to restore access to a crypto wallet — according to the affidavit. His Kraken account held about $188,600, mostly in U.S. dollars and the USDC stablecoin, a token pegged to the U.S. dollar, with smaller amounts in Squid (QUID) and Bitcoin. A further $933,800 sat in Suilend, a lending protocol on the Sui blockchain, which he had accessed through the Slush wallet app. Yaroch told agents he chose Suilend "simply because he liked that the logo was a water droplet."

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

Decrypt first reported on the charges against Yaroch in August, weeks after he self-reported to the bureau. With the pleas entered, the case now moves to sentencing, scheduled for March 4, 2027.