An FBI agent told investigators he went into bureau systems, memorized the keys to crypto wallets from a case he worked, and moved the money to himself. He said so on July 29 to a Justice Department colleague, in a meeting he asked for. An FBI affidavit filed three days later lays out the rest.
Patrick Steven Yaroch of Ashburn, Virginia, was an FBI supervisory special agent in the unit that hunts foreign spies, with a Top Secret clearance. The FBI fired him on July 31 and arrested him the same day. Prosecutors charged him with moving and receiving stolen goods.
The keys were in his head
From 2017 to 2025, Yaroch worked in the FBI's Boston office on a squad focused on one country that the affidavit does not name. Two sources told NBC News it was Russia. He grew frustrated that the FBI could not or would not act against the crypto accounts he ran into, he told colleagues, and he decided to act.
According to the affidavit, he searched FBI holdings for those accounts and memorized the recovery phrases that open a wallet. Then he set up a wallet of his own and moved funds into it 10 to 12 times, starting in late 2024.
He could not say how much came out of those accounts, he told the FBI, because he had mixed the funds with his own money. He put the total under a million dollars.
NBC News on the charges and the Russia link
ChatGPT picked Portugal
On the morning of June 4, 2026, Yaroch asked ChatGPT how someone with $1 million could leave the US for an EU country. Portugal was ChatGPT's top pick. The chat was on his phone.
They also found three passports, one diplomatic, and a June 15 power of attorney for two Portuguese lawyers to get him a tax number. A TAP Air Portugal booking had him, his wife and child leaving Washington on September 3 and returning on September 11. Yaroch called it a family trip to meet friends.
The affidavit also says FBI records showed foreign trips he never reported, though the rules required it. Yaroch flew to Germany on May 14, came back from Portugal on May 25, and spent June 30 to July 5 in Grenada.
He says he never spent it
Yaroch told agents he never contacted anyone tied to the accounts and never spent the money. Around July 23 agents saw about $1.02 million move to Suilend, a crypto lending service he reached through the Slush wallet app. He picked it because he liked that its logo was a water droplet, and left the money to earn interest.
On July 31 he signed a consent form, and agents moved about $925,426 into government wallets. The court found probable cause on August 4 and sent the case toward a grand jury. It put off the release decision to August 5 and kept him in custody. He has not been indicted, and a public defender declined to comment.
The FBI said it "immediately took action" once it learned of the allegations. The affidavit does not say whether any alert or audit caught the transfers. What it describes is a man messaging an old colleague, filing the bureau's self-report form, and asking for a meeting.
