A supervisory special agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has been arrested and accused in a federal court filing of stealing more than $1 million in cryptocurrency from wallets tied to individuals the agency had investigated.

The agent, identified as Patrick Steven Yarmoch, held a "top secret" security clearance and worked in the counterintelligence and espionage division at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. He allegedly turned himself in to colleagues, admitting that he had extracted cryptocurrency keys from FBI systems and used them to make as many as a dozen transfers to himself from accounts connected to foreign nationals he had investigated, according to an August 1 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Yarmoch, a resident of Ashburn, Virginia, had worked for years out of the FBI's Boston field office in a national-security unit focused on an unnamed "adversary nation" before transferring to the headquarters counterintelligence unit investigating the same country. Following his alleged confession, Yarmoch was suspended for several days, then fired and arrested on July 31.

According to the court filing, Yarmoch used accounts with the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken and also Suilend, the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol built on the Sui blockchain, accessed via a Slush wallet, to handle the digital assets. The case underscores the dual-edged nature of cryptocurrency in law enforcement: while digital assets' transparent ledgers can aid investigators in tracing funds, the ability to move value quickly across borders and through DeFi platforms also presents custody and insider-threat challenges for agencies that increasingly seize and hold crypto as part of criminal investigations.

FBI searches of Yarmoch's computer and phone records revealed queries he had posed to AI applications, including: "If you had a bucket of money (around $1 million) and you wanted to leave the USA and become a resident or citizen of an EU country, what would you do?" The AI app reportedly recommended Portugal as a destination.

Investigators also discovered travel plans for Yarmoch and his family to visit Portugal the following month. The filing further alleged that Yarmoch had made recent trips to Germany, Portugal, and Grenada without reporting them internally, a violation of FBI regulations.

Yarmoch was placed in detention in Alexandria, Virginia. The case was filed under docket gov.uscourts.vaed.602203 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.