Former FBI supervisory agent Patrick Steven Yaroch was charged with using internal systems to obtain credentials for cryptocurrency wallets linked to an adversarial country, which he used to transfer funds to his own crypto wallets.
Yaroch admitted to 10 unauthorized transfers between late 2024 and early 2025 that involved an estimated total of $1 million in digital assets, some of which he deposited into Suilend to earn yield, according to a Saturday US Federal court filing.
After self-reporting the incident, Yaroch was placed on administrative leave last Wednesday, terminated and then arrested on Friday. Agents retrieved devices, seed phrases and a Trezor wallet from his Virginia residence to access his accounts on Suilend and crypto exchange Kraken. With his cooperation, they transferred roughly $925,000 in funds to government-controlled wallets.
In May, Yaroch used ChatGPT for advice.
“If I had a million dollars, how would you suggest investing it/spending it to maximize profit and return,” he wrote in the AI prompt, according to the court filing. ChatGPT suggested “building a slower-living vineyard/agricultural lifestyle in places like Cilento or Portugal’s Dão region.”
Yaroch is the latest case of crypto theft involving a federal agent. In 2015, former DEA special agent Carl M. Force diverted about $700,000 in Bitcoin before pleading guilty and being sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
Former US Secret Service special agent Shaun W. Bridges stole about $350,000 in BTC back in 2015 before pleading guilty and facing a sentence of six years in prison. Both cases were tied to the investigation into dark net marketplace Silk Road.
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