Former FBI agent set to plead guilty to stealing $1M in crypto

Patrick Steven Yaroch allegedly used his access to counterintelligence case files to drain wallets tied to an investigation of adversarial nations A former FBI supervisory special agent is expected to plead guilty to stealing roughly $1 million in crypto. The coins came from wallets the bureau was watching as part of a counterintelligence investigation. How the alleged theft worked The defendant is Patrick Steven Yaroch. He is set to enter a guilty plea on November 4, 2026, in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. The charges relate to the theft of approximately $1 million in digital assets. The wallets involved were tied to a counterintelligence probe targeting adversarial nations. Court records indicate Yaroch held Top Secret clearance. That clearance gave him access to internal FBI systems, where he was able to obtain the seed phrases for the wallets in question. A seed phrase is a string of words that acts as the master key to a crypto wallet. Whoever knows those words controls the funds, with no bank, password reset or customer service line standing in the way. Yaroch allegedly memorized the phrases rather than copying them down, which avoided leaving an obvious paper tra...