FBI agent stole $2.47m in crypto from criminal wallets

In this article

• A former FBI supervisor stole from cryptocurrency wallets involved in 35 FBI investigations
• He planned to use the proceeds to finance a new life in Portugal
• He turned himself in after confessing to a former colleague

Law enforcement officers are trusted to handle sensitive evidence properly. A 37-year-old former FBI supervisor used that access to steal millions in cryptocurrency.

Patrick Steven Yaroch pleaded guilty on November 5 to wire fraud and money laundering after stealing approximately $2.47 million from cryptocurrency wallets linked to FBI investigations.

He stole the money from wallets held by people the FBI was investigating, which included adversarial nation-state actors. Starting no later than December 2024, he made around 100 transfers using credentials tied to 35 separate investigations.

The FBI’s search affidavit says that Yaroch accessed FBI systems containing wallet seed phrases and memorized them. A seed phrase is a series of words, commonly 12 or 24, used to restore access to a cryptocurrency wallet. Anyone with the seed phrase can potentially control the funds.

He then used the memorized phrases to transfer funds to a personal wallet on his own device. He subsequently swapped assets into different currencies and made further transactions to try and hide their origins.