In brief

  • Former FBI agent Patrick Yaroch pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering for stealing some $2.47 million in crypto using credentials the bureau had collected.
  • Prosecutors said he made about 100 fraudulent transfers tied to 35 FBI investigations, compromising cases involving criminal groups and nation-state adversaries.
  • Yaroch asked ChatGPT where to live in the EU and, after it suggested buying a vineyard in Portugal, hired lawyers there to obtain a tax ID.

A former FBI agent has pleaded guilty to stealing about $2.47 million in cryptocurrency using wallet credentials the bureau had collected during its own investigations, the Justice Department said on Thursday.

Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, pleaded guilty 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.

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

Beginning no later than December 2024, he used that access to steal crypto from wallets controlled by subjects of other investigations, by nation-state actors, and from at least one wallet the FBI had created for an operation. He made about 100 fraudulent transfers using credentials from 35 separate FBI investigations, then swapped the stolen funds into other cryptocurrencies and moved them through further transactions to hide their origin. He used some of the money to pay off credit cards, car payments and other loans.

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Yaroch also planned 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 for him, prosecutors said. He arranged to travel to Portugal in September.

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

Yaroch's confession

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 become 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 less than the figures in his plea. Agents searching his home two days later seized a Trezor hardware wallet, three passports and a slip of paper bearing seed phrases, according to the affidavit. His Kraken account held about $188,600, mostly in U.S. dollars and the USDC stablecoin, 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 reported on the charges against Yaroch in August.

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