Former FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Stealing $2.47M in Crypto From 35 Cases

Patrick Steven Yaroch, a former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for stealing about $2.47 million in cryptocurrency, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced on November 5.

• Court papers put the stolen amount at $2,474,380.66, taken in roughly 100 fraudulent transfers.
• The transfers used credentials tied to 35 separate FBI investigations.
• Yaroch, 37, faces up to 20 years in prison and sentencing is set for March 4, 2027.

What happened in the FBI wallet theft case

Yaroch, of Ashburn, Virginia, entered his pleas in federal court in Alexandria. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles accepted the plea.

Prosecutors said he drew on wallets controlled by investigation subjects and adversarial nation-state actors. They also said he used at least one wallet the FBI had created for an operation.

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From 2017 through early 2025, Yaroch worked in the FBI Boston Division on a squad focused on an adversarial nation-state. From February 2025 through July 31, 2026, he served in the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division at headquarters. There he had access to systems storing cryptocurrency credentials gathered in investigations.

How the stolen crypto was moved and spent

Beginning no later than December 2024, Yaroch moved coins out of those wallets and into ones he controlled. He then swapped the funds into other digital assets and ran further transactions meant to hide their source, nature and ownership.

Between November 25, 2025, and January 13, 2026, he moved about $93,082 into one of his accounts. He then shifted funds among other accounts to cover debts, including credit cards, car payments and loans, the office said.

The plea papers also describe plans to move to Portugal. Yaroch asked ChatGPT how to maximize investment returns and where to live in the European Union. After the chatbot suggested buying a vineyard in Portugal, he gave Portuguese lawyers a power of attorney on June 15, 2026. It was meant to register him with the Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority, obtain a tax identification number and collect his finance portal password. He arranged travel to Portugal for September 2026.

Damage to FBI investigations and earlier figures

The office said his conduct compromised multiple FBI investigations into criminal groups and nation-state adversaries. It also compromised sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection and criminal cases. The statement of facts says it “deprived FBI employees of their ability to carry out their functions to protect public safety and national security.”

When Yaroch was charged in August, the criminal complaint put the theft at about $1 million. The plea puts it at $2.47 million.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Theophani K. Stamos and Daniel S. Wierzbicki, special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence Division, announced the plea. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathleen Robeson and Russell Carlberg are prosecuting, with help from the National Security Cyber Section of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and the inspector general’s Mid-Atlantic region. The case is 1:26-CR-208.

Why the case is important

US agencies hold large amounts of seized crypto, and the government’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, created by executive order in March 2025, is funded with forfeited bitcoin. Yaroch reached the coins through FBI systems that stored wallet credentials collected in investigations, which shows how much access a single investigator can have to seized funds.

It is not the first case of its kind. In 2015, two federal agents from the task force that investigated the Silk Road darknet market, Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges, were sentenced to prison for stealing bitcoin during that investigation.

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What happens next

How the court will treat the gap between the July self-report and the $2.47 million plea figure is not yet known.