Patrick Steven Yaroch, a 37-year-old former FBI agent from Ashburn, Virginia, pleaded guilty Thursday to wire fraud and money laundering after stealing approximately $2.47 million in cryptocurrency from FBI investigations, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.
Yaroch made roughly 100 fraudulent transfers using credentials tied to 35 separate FBI investigations. He accessed wallets controlled by investigation subjects, adversarial nation-state actors, and at least one wallet the FBI itself had created for an operation. Beginning no later than December 2024, Yaroch used his position in the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division to move coins out of those wallets into ones he controlled. He then swapped the stolen cryptocurrency into other digital assets and conducted further transactions to obscure the source, nature and ownership of the funds.
Between November 25, 2025, and January 13, 2026, Yaroch moved about $93,082 into one of his accounts and shuffled funds among other accounts to cover debts including credit cards, car payments and loans. He consulted ChatGPT about investment returns and living in the European Union, and after the chatbot suggested buying a vineyard in Portugal, he gave Portuguese lawyers power of attorney on June 15, 2026, to register him with Portuguese tax authorities and obtain a tax identification number. He arranged travel to Portugal for September 2026.
Yaroch self-reported the activity to two department employees on July 29, 2026. The Justice Department Office of the Inspector General flagged the case in August after his arrest on a criminal complaint. An earlier account described about 10 transfers totaling roughly $1 million, but plea figures are larger.
From 2017 through early 2025, Yaroch worked in the FBI Boston Division on a squad focused on an adversarial nation-state. He then served in the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division at headquarters from February 2025 through July 31, 2026.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles accepted the plea. Yaroch faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on March 4, 2027. The agreed statement of facts states that Yaroch's conduct compromised multiple FBI investigations into criminal groups and nation-state adversaries, compromised FBI sources and methods, and "deprived FBI employees of their ability to carry out their functions to protect public safety and national security."