A supervisory FBI agent with top secret clearance is accused of pulling seed phrases from bureau systems, moving about $1 million into his own wallet, and then confessing to colleagues.
Posted August 4, 2026 at 7:01 am EST.
A supervisory special agent in the FBI‘s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division has been arrested and accused of taking roughly $1 million in cryptocurrency from wallets tied to a foreign adversary he was assigned to investigate. Patrick Steven Yaroch was fired on July 31 and arrested the same day, according to an affidavit filed August 1 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Yaroch is facing charges of interstate transportation of stolen goods and receipt of stolen goods, under 18 U.S.C. sections 2314 and 2315. He held a Top Secret clearance with sensitive compartmented information access since May 2017, worked at FBI headquarters from February 2025 while also detailed to another intelligence agency, and spent 2017 to 2025 in the Boston field office on a national security squad focused on the adversary nation. Two sources told NBC News that nation was Russia. Yaroch told colleagues he searched FBI holdings for the accounts, memorized the seed phrases, created a personal wallet, and moved funds roughly 10 to 12 times beginning in late 2024 or early 2025.
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A search of Yaroch’s house revealed a Kraken account with about $188,570 and about $933,757 in Suilend, the Sui lending protocol, accessed through a Slush wallet he said he chose because he liked that the logo was a water droplet. He signed a consent form allowing agents to move $925,426 into government wallets. Investigators also seized a Trezor, three passports including a diplomatic one, a handwritten seed phrase, a June 15 power of attorney for two Portuguese lawyers to obtain his Portuguese tax identification number, and TAP Air Portugal bookings for September 3. His ChatGPT history included a June 4 query about leaving the US for EU residency with $1 million, to which the model recommended Portugal.
The affidavit states Yaroch never interacted with anyone connected to the accounts and never spent the money.
US Magistrate Judge Lindsey R. Vaala ordered Yaroch temporarily detained Monday, with a hearing set for Tuesday.
The case is the second insider breach this year involving crypto that the US government controlled or tracked, after a $46 million theft from US Marshals Service wallets led to an arrest in March.
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AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
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