FBI agent charged with stealing nearly $1M in crypto from investigation target

An FBI counterintelligence supervisor took about US$925,000 worth of cryptocurrency from a foreign intelligence target he was investigating and moved it to his own wallet, according to a criminal complaint filed in Virginia last week. Patrick Steven Yaroch was arrested July 31 at his home in Ashburn, Virginia, and charged the same day by criminal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia with interstate transportation of stolen goods, securities and monies, and receipt of stolen goods, securities and monies, Washington Examiner reported. The FBI fired him that day.The affidavit does not name the country whose accounts were drained, describing it only as adversarial. Two people familiar with the matter told NBC News it was Russia.Bitcoin.com reported that the nation and the target's identity both remain sealed in the court record.Yaroch had been with the bureau since 2017 and held a Top Secret clearance as a supervisory special agent in the FBI's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. He spent years on national security work in the Boston Division before moving to headquarters in Washington in early 2025, CoinDesk reported.According to the affidavit, he grew dissatisfied that the FBI was unwilling or unable to disrupt the adversarial nation's use of cryptocurrency and resolved to "take matters into his own hands," the Washington Examiner reported. A general view of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) building in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 28, 2025. Photo by Reuters Starting in late 2024, Patch reported, he searched FBI systems for the passphrases attached to those accounts, created a wallet of his own and moved the funds across 10 to 12 transactions.The FBI's investigation began when Yaroch approached a Justice Department employee over the encrypted messaging app Signal. He confessed to making "very poor decisions related to cryptocurrency wallets," Bloomberg reported, citing the affidavit.When agents searched his home, he handed over his FBI credentials and the details of his wallets.Investigators concluded he never spent any of the money and never dealt with anyone connected to the foreign accounts.U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey R. Vaala ordered Yaroch temporarily detained on Aug. 3, with a further hearing the following day.Prosecutors are expected to seek an indictment.