Ex-FBI agent admits stealing $2.47M in crypto from bureau case wallets

Yaroch, 37, of Ashburn, Virginia, entered the plea on Nov. 5, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. He copped to wire fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors say the scheme started no later than December 2024.

He used credentials tied to 35 separate FBI investigations to pull off approximately 100 fraudulent transfers. The wallets he hit belonged to investigation subjects and adversarial nation-state actors — and at least one wallet the FBI had created for its own operation.

The fallout went well past the money. Prosecutors' account of the agreed statement of facts says Yaroch compromised multiple investigations involving criminal groups and nation-state adversaries, plus FBI sources and methods used in foreign intelligence collection and criminal probes. He spent 2017 into early 2025 on an FBI Boston investigative squad focused on an adversarial nation, then moved to the bureau's Counterintelligence and Espionage Division from February 2025 through July 31, 2026, with access to systems holding crypto credentials gathered during investigations.

An FBI affidavit filed in August says Yaroch told colleagues he searched FBI holdings, memorized wallet credentials and used them to move funds into his personal wallet, according to the outlet. He then traded the crypto for other cryptocurrencies and pushed it through more transactions to hide where it came from and who owned it.

Between Nov. 25, 2025, and Jan. 13, 2026, he sent roughly $93,082 to one of his accounts, then shuffled funds between accounts to pay off debts including credit cards, car payments and loans. Agents who searched on July 31, 2026, transferred about $925,426 from crypto accounts he controlled into U.S. government wallets.

Sentencing is scheduled for March 4, 2027, and he faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.