Patrick Yaroch: FBI Agent Trusted With Crypto Passwords Pleads Guilty to Taking $2.47M

In a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday 5 November 2026, a former FBI agent pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering. Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, had been trusted with access to the systems where the bureau keeps the passwords to crypto wallets it collects during its investigations. Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles accepted the plea.

The US Justice Department puts his take at $2,474,380.66. It came in about 100 fraudulent transfers, using passwords tied to 35 separate FBI investigations. When he confessed in July, Yaroch described about 10 to 12 transfers worth under $1 million.

He is convicted by his own plea but not yet sentenced. That is set for 4 March 2027. He faces up to 20 years in prison, which is the legal ceiling and not a forecast: the judge will decide after weighing the US Sentencing Guidelines and other factors.

The keys to other people's money

A crypto wallet works like a safe-deposit box with no bank attached. Whoever holds the password can empty it, and no branch manager can reverse the transfer. When FBI agents collect those passwords in a case, the case file becomes something very close to the money itself.

From 2017 through early 2025, Yaroch worked in the FBI's Boston Division on a squad focused on what court papers call an adversarial nation state, without naming it. From February 2025 until 31 July 2026 he was in the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, the part of the bureau that hunts foreign spies. There he had access to FBI systems holding the crypto credentials gathered in investigations. The Justice Department says the thefts began no later than December 2024.

When the case first surfaced in August, it concerned accounts linked to one foreign adversary. The plea is much wider. The Justice Department says he took crypto from three kinds of wallet: those controlled by the subjects of other investigations, those controlled by adversarial nation state actors, and at least one wallet the FBI itself created for an operation.

The Record, a cybersecurity news site, reported that the 100 transfers came from 79 wallets, that the money was taken from at least two adversarial nations and 10 victims of crimes, and that single thefts ranged from 81 cents to over $580,000. Gizmodo, citing The Washington Post, also reported that documents filed with the plea say some of the money belonged to at least 10 victims of financial crimes the bureau was investigating. Public records do not name the nations. NBC News reported in August that the country in the original case was Russia, citing two people familiar with the matter, and no official has confirmed that on the record.

The damage went beyond the money. According to the Justice Department, the agreed statement of facts says Yaroch compromised multiple investigations into criminal groups and nation state adversaries, and compromised FBI sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection and criminal cases. The Record reported that the thefts exposed the investigations to the targets who controlled the wallets.

Where the money went

The two charges describe the two halves of the scheme. Wire fraud is fraud carried out over phone lines or the internet. Money laundering is hiding where dirty money came from.

Once he had moved the stolen crypto, Yaroch exchanged it for a different cryptocurrency, much as a thief might swap stolen banknotes for another currency at a bureau de change. He then ran it through further transactions to disguise its source, nature and ownership. Between 25 November 2025 and 13 January 2026 he transferred about $93,082 to one of his accounts, moved it between his other accounts, and paid his debts from them: credit cards, car payments and other loans. The Record reported that his debts ran to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That sits badly with the account he first gave. In July he said he was frustrated that the FBI "could not or would not act" against an adversary's crypto, and decided to "take matters into his own hands". Prosecutors wrote in August that he "should not be viewed as a selfless Robin Hoodesque figure", and that he meant to use the crypto "for his own personal enrichment, just like any other fraudster". His plea now covers the credit cards.

The vineyard

The Justice Department says Yaroch also intended to use the money to finance a new life abroad. He asked ChatGPT how to maximize profit from investments and where to live in the European Union.

The FBI affidavit quotes the exchanges. On 28 May 2026 he asked: "If I had a million dollars, how would you suggest investing it/spending it to maximize profit and return." The reply mentioned his interest in a "slower-living vineyard/agricultural lifestyle" in places including Portugal's Dão region. On 4 June he asked what to do with "a bucket of money (around $1 million)" to leave the USA for the EU. ChatGPT called Portugal "my top choice for your specific situation". The Justice Department's own summary calls this "ChatGPT's suggestion of buying a vineyard in Portugal". The questions quoted in the affidavit do not say where the money came from.

On 15 June 2026, Yaroch gave lawyers in Portugal a power of attorney, a document letting them act in his name. It covered representing him before the Portuguese Tax and Customs Authority, registering him, getting him a tax identification number, and collecting the password to his finance portal. He then made arrangements to travel to Portugal in September 2026. He was arrested before he could go.

What is still unknown

Yaroch ended it himself. On 29 July he confessed to a former colleague at the Justice Department's National Security Division, saying, according to The Record, that it was "eating him up inside". He filed a self-report with the FBI, and on 31 July the bureau fired and arrested him. That day agents swept crypto worth about $925,426 into government wallets, and about $165,582 in plain dollars stayed in his account at Kraken, a US crypto exchange that works like an online broker.

The Justice Department release does not say how much of the $2.47 million has been recovered, and it says nothing about forfeiture or repayment to victims. Unchained, a crypto news outlet, noted that it also does not explain how the rest of the money was traced.

The charges changed along the way. The original complaint alleged interstate transportation and receipt of stolen goods, with a maximum of 10 years on each count. Wire fraud and money laundering, in case number 1:26-CR-208, carry the 20-year exposure he now faces.

His lawyer in August was Kyle Boynton, himself a former FBI agent. No statement from Yaroch or his lawyer on the plea appears in the Justice Department release or in the coverage by The Record, Decrypt, Gizmodo, Unchained or crypto.news. Boynton's last public position dates from before the plea: he argued that Yaroch might face a guidelines range of 24 to 30 months, against the 41 to 51 months prosecutors called a conservative estimate. Both numbers were written when the public figure was under $1 million.

Yaroch is not the first federal agent caught with his hand in a case's crypto. Carl Force of the Drug Enforcement Administration and Shaun Bridges of the Secret Service both went to prison for stealing bitcoin during the Silk Road investigation, Force for more than six years and Bridges for nearly six.