Ex-FBI Agent’s Plea Puts Crypto Theft at $2.47 Million, Over Twice What He First Told the FBI

Patrick Steven Yaroch, a 37-year-old former FBI agent from Ashburn, Va., pleaded guilty on Nov. 5 to wire fraud and money laundering over the theft of about $2.47 million in crypto, taken with wallet credentials he could access on FBI systems, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.

No later than December 2024, Yaroch began moving funds out of wallets whose credentials were linked to 35 separate FBI investigations, eventually making about 100 fraudulent transfers, prosecutors said. His targets included subjects of other probes and adversarial nation state actors, plus at least one wallet the FBI built for an operation. According to the agreed statement of facts, as summarized by prosecutors, the thefts hurt several FBI cases targeting criminal groups and hostile governments, and compromised bureau sources and methods.

Get Unchained’s crypto news in your inbox with the free Unchained Daily newsletter.

Those totals come to about two and a half times the dollar figure, and about 10 times the number of transfers, that Yaroch gave FBI headquarters in July, as recounted in the FBI affidavit filed after his arrest. In that account, he said he had moved funds into one personal wallet about 10 times, that the wallet held roughly $1 million and that he had not touched the money. The same affidavit says agents found he had moved about $1.02 million into a Suilend account around July 23, and that he made additional transfers after receiving the crypto. Yaroch consented to agents sweeping about $925,426 into government wallets, the affidavit said. The plea announcement did not say how the remaining difference was traced.

The Justice Department says Yaroch converted what he took into different tokens and ran it through more transactions to disguise it. Between Nov. 25, 2025, and Jan. 13, 2026, he moved about $93,082 into one of his accounts, then shifted it among others and used it to pay down debts, including card balances, car payments and other borrowing.

Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia accepted the plea (Case No. 1:26-CR-208). Sentencing is set for March 4, 2027, and Yaroch faces up to 20 years in prison.

According to the release, Yaroch had quizzed ChatGPT on maximizing investment returns and on where in the EU to settle, and the chatbot suggested a Portuguese vineyard. On June 15, 2026, he signed a power of attorney letting lawyers in Portugal represent him before the country’s tax authority and get him a tax identification number, then arranged a September trip there.

Unchained reported in August that Yaroch had been fired and arrested on July 31 and initially charged with interstate transportation and receipt of stolen goods.

Related Listen: Why Did the FBI Call Out ThorChain in Its Warning After the Binance Hack?

The post Ex-FBI Agent’s Plea Puts Crypto Theft at $2.47 Million, Over Twice What He First Told the FBI appeared first on Unchained.