FBI agent charged with stealing $1M in crypto from targets
Patrick Steven Yaroch, an FBI supervisory counterintelligence agent based in Washington, D.C., was arrested on July 31, 2026, in Ashburn, Virginia, and charged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia with interstate transportation of stolen goods and receipt of stolen goods Bloomberg.
The Theft and Admission
Yaroch admitted to stealing approximately $925,426 to nearly $1 million in cryptocurrency from wallets tied to foreign or adversarial investigation targets, according to court filings CoinDesk. He used his FBI system access to obtain wallet passphrases and made roughly 10 to 12 transfers beginning in late 2024.
In a significant departure from typical criminal behavior, Yaroch voluntarily contacted the Department of Justice to disclose his conduct. Court papers quoted him as saying the conduct was "eating him up inside" and that he wanted to "get it off his chest" CNN.
Employment and Charges
The FBI fired Yaroch after the allegations became public NBC News. As of the available court filings and reporting, no conviction, sentence, or final penalty has been announced. The case is proceeding in the Eastern District of Virginia, though the specific foreign target country is not named in the affidavit itself.
Significance
The case underscores a critical vulnerability in law enforcement's handling of digital assets and investigative data. An agent with legitimate access to sensitive systems exploited that trust to redirect cryptocurrency holdings—a form of theft that would have been virtually impossible without official credentials and system privileges. The roughly 10-month window of transfers suggests a sustained pattern rather than an isolated instance of misconduct.
Yaroch's self-disclosure adds complexity to the narrative. Unlike cases where fraud is discovered through audit or victim complaint, this scenario involved a federal employee actively choosing to report his own conduct to the Department of Justice, potentially mitigating some aspects of his legal exposure but not eliminating the charges or the breach of trust at the core of the allegation.