Key facts
- Prosecutors said Yaroch made about 100 fraudulent transfers using credentials from 35 separate FBI investigations.
- The plea agreement's statement of facts said his actions compromised FBI investigations and sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection.
- Yaroch faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 4, 2027.
- An FBI affidavit said his Kraken account held about $188,600, mostly in US dollars and the USDC stablecoin.
- The affidavit said a further $933,800 sat in Suilend, a lending protocol on the Sui blockchain, accessed through the Slush wallet app.
- Agents transferred about $925,000 from those accounts to government-controlled wallets, the affidavit said.
Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering in federal court in Alexandria, the Justice Department said on November 5, 2026. He faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 4, 2027.
Prosecutors said Yaroch stole about $2.47 million in cryptocurrency using wallet credentials the FBI had collected during its own investigations. He worked at the FBI's Boston Division from 2017 to early 2025 on a squad investigating an unnamed "adversarial nation state," then moved to the bureau's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, where he had access to FBI systems holding crypto credentials gathered in investigations.
Beginning no later than December 2024, prosecutors said, 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, swapped the stolen funds into other cryptocurrencies and moved them through further transactions to hide their origin, and used some of the money to pay off credit cards, car payments and other loans.
According to the plea agreement's statement of facts, his actions compromised multiple FBI investigations into criminal groups and nation-state adversaries, as well as sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection. Prosecutors also said Yaroch 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. He arranged to travel to Portugal in September.
An FBI affidavit filed in the case said 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, 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 he 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, the affidavit said. His Kraken account held about $188,600, mostly in US 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, while the roughly $165,600 held as US dollars on Kraken could not be moved the same way.