A senior FBI official has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $2.4 million in cryptocurrency, according to The Record.
Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, faces up to 20 years in prison on wire fraud and money laundering charges. He admitted to using his position on an FBI investigative squad to steal the funds to cover his debts.
Yaroch was a Supervisory Special Agent at FBI Headquarters within the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. His work focused on an unnamed nation-state.
The report says he used his seniority to access FBI systems containing the codes and passwords needed to take cryptocurrency from at least two adversarial nations and 10 crime victims. He conducted 100 transfers from 79 wallets beginning in December 2024. The wallets were connected to 35 FBI investigations.
Prosecutors said Yaroch had hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, loans and car payments. He paid off several large loans. The Justice Department reviewed his ChatGPT conversations, which showed he planned to buy a vineyard in Portugal and retire. He had begun legal arrangements in Portugal and bought plane tickets for himself, his wife and his child