A former Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence supervisor pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering after admitting he stole roughly $2.47 million in cryptocurrency tied to federal investigations. Patrick Steven Yaroch, a 37-year-old resident of Ashburn, Virginia, drained digital wallets linked to subjects of criminal investigations, adversarial nation-state actors, and at least one wallet the bureau itself created for an operation. According to court filings reported by The Washington Post, the stolen capital included funds belonging to at least ten financial crime victims under investigation by the federal agency. The total sum uncovered by prosecutors is more than double the initial $1 million highlighted when federal authorities first charged Yaroch in August.
Key takeaways
- Patrick Steven Yaroch pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering involving $2.47 million in stolen crypto.
- The scheme involved about 100 fraudulent transfers across 35 separate FBI investigations using internal credentials.
- Yaroch used ChatGPT to research relocation options and tax identifiers in Portugal before his arrest in July.
- He faces up to 20 years in prison with a sentencing hearing scheduled for March.
Inside the Internal Crypto Scheme
Yaroch worked at the FBI Boston Division from 2017 through early 2025 on a squad targeting an adversarial nation-state, later moving to the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division until his termination on July 31. This assignment provided him with internal access to digital credentials gathered during active operations. Investigators state that beginning no later than December 2024, Yaroch memorized passphrases from adversarial accounts and executed roughly 100 fraudulent transfers across 35 separate FBI investigations, netting approximately $2,474,380.66. He subsequently swapped the stolen digital assets into other cryptocurrencies and executed further transactions to obscure their origin.
Between November 25, 2025, and January 13, 2026, court documents show he funneled about $93,082 into a personal account and shuffled money to cover credit card bills, car payments, and other loans. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathleen Robeson and Russell Carlberg noted in legal filings that while Yaroch initially claimed frustration that the bureau would not act against adversarial holdings, evidence proved he planned to use the stolen cryptocurrency strictly for personal enrichment.
ChatGPT Planning and Arrest
Court records detail that Yaroch used artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to plan his exit strategy, asking the chatbot how to invest around $1 million and where to live in the European Union. ChatGPT named Portugal as its top choice, prompting Yaroch to grant Portuguese lawyers power of attorney in June to register him with local tax authorities. He had already traveled to Portugal in May without federal disclosure and booked another family trip for September, but authorities intervened first.
Yaroch confessed to a Department of Justice National Security Division employee on July 29, describing his actions as poor decisions that were eating him up inside. He submitted an online self-report to the FBI Security Division, and agents arrested him two days later on July 31. During the subsequent search, investigators seized a Trezor hardware wallet, multiple passports, power-of-attorney paperwork, and handwritten notes containing crypto seed phrases, while finding hundreds of thousands of dollars parked across Kraken and a Suilend account accessed through Slush.
Sentencing and Historical Precedents
Yaroch is scheduled for sentencing in March and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors emphasized that his unauthorized transfers severely compromised multiple ongoing investigations, along with valuable FBI sources and methods utilized in foreign intelligence collection.
This incident is not the first instance of federal law enforcement personnel abusing access to seized digital assets. During the historic investigation into the Silk Road darknet market, former Drug Enforcement Administration agent Carl Force and former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges were convicted and sentenced to roughly six years each for stealing bitcoin encountered during the job. Additionally, prosecutors charged John Daghita earlier this year with allegedly stealing tens of millions of dollars from a stockpile managed by a company assisting the U.S. Marshals Service.
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