Ex-FBI agent admits stealing $2.47 million in crypto from wallets the bureau was tracking

A former FBI supervisory agent has pleaded guilty to stealing about $2.47 million in cryptocurrency by using wallet credentials the bureau had collected in its own investigations. Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, admitted to wire fraud and money laundering in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to Decrypt, The Record and crypto.news, all summarizing the Justice Department's announcement. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

What was taken, and from whom

Some headlines describe this as theft "from nation-state hackers." The reporting is more precise, and the difference matters. The Record says the funds belonged to at least two adversarial nations and to 10 victims of crimes. Decrypt and crypto.news, citing the DOJ account, describe the wallets as belonging to investigation subjects, foreign adversaries and at least one wallet the FBI itself created for an operation. So not every dollar came from a state-linked actor, and some came from crime victims.

Item	Figure	Source
Total stolen	$2,474,380.66	crypto.news, citing authorities
Fraudulent transfers	About 100	Decrypt, crypto.news
Wallets involved	79	The Record
FBI investigations affected	35	All three outlets
Size of single thefts	81 cents to over $580,000	The Record
Earliest theft	No later than December 2024	Decrypt, The Record

The total is more than double what Yaroch first described. When he came forward on July 29, Decrypt reports, he said he had made roughly 10 to 12 transfers worth under $1 million.

How it worked

Yaroch worked in the FBI's Boston Division from 2017 to early 2025 on a squad investigating an unnamed adversarial nation state, Decrypt reports. He then moved to the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division at headquarters, where, according to The Record, his seniority gave him access to FBI systems holding the codes and passwords needed to move crypto.

Per the DOJ account relayed by Decrypt, after moving coins he swapped them into other cryptocurrencies and ran further transactions to obscure their origin. That is the money laundering count. Some of the proceeds went to pay off credit cards, car payments and other loans, and The Record reports he carried hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Prosecutors also said ChatGPT conversations showed he was planning to retire to a vineyard in Portugal. Decrypt reports he gave Portuguese lawyers power of attorney to obtain a tax identification number and had arranged to travel there in September.

How it unraveled

On July 29, Decrypt reports, Yaroch broke down while speaking to a former colleague at the Justice Department's National Security Division and then reported himself at FBI headquarters. He said he was frustrated that the bureau "could not or would not act" against an adversary's crypto accounts. The Record adds that he told the colleague the guilt was "eating him up inside."

Agents searched his home two days later, according to the FBI affidavit as described by Decrypt. They found a hardware wallet, three passports and a slip of paper with seed phrases. Decrypt reports about $925,000 was moved from his accounts into government-controlled wallets, and crypto.news says about $925,000 was reportedly recovered. That leaves well over $1.5 million of the stated total not accounted for in the public reporting we reviewed.

The damage beyond the money

The larger harm may be to the cases. Prosecutors said in the statement of facts that his conduct compromised multiple FBI investigations into criminal groups and nation-state adversaries, and sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection, per Decrypt. The Record reports that the people controlling the targeted wallets were alerted to the investigations when funds moved.

Sentencing exposure

All three outlets report a maximum of 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles accepted the plea, per crypto.news, which lists the case as 1:26-CR-208. Sentencing is set for March 4, 2027, according to Decrypt and crypto.news. The Record says only "March." A statutory maximum is a ceiling, not a forecast; actual sentences under federal guidelines depend on the amount, the defendant's role and any plea agreement terms, which we have not seen.

Why it matters for crypto

Law enforcement now holds large amounts of seized and monitored crypto, and the control of that crypto rests on credentials, not on a bank or court vault. This case shows that custody inside a government agency is also an insider-risk problem. It is a story about internal controls, not about any coin or token, and the thefts moved across assets rather than on any one market. For anyone holding crypto, the general lesson is unchanged: whoever holds the keys controls the funds.

Sources: U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Virginia release (we could not load this page directly, so DOJ details are as reported by the outlets below); The Record; Decrypt; crypto.news. Outlets differ on rounding ($2.4 million vs $2.47 million); we use the figure in court papers as reported. A guilty plea is not a sentence. This is news, not investment advice.