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An FBI supervisory agent has been fired and charged with siphoning roughly $925,000 in cryptocurrency out of wallets belonging to a foreign investigative target.

Getting into it: According to the affidavit, Patrick Steven Yaroch got fed up in late 2024 because the FBI “could not or would not” disrupt the target’s use of cryptocurrency. So he went digging through internal bureau systems, found the credentials, memorized the seed phrases, opened a wallet of his own, and moved the money in 10 to 12 separate transfers. He told investigators he decided to “take matters into his own hands.”

Yaroch spent roughly eight years in the FBI’s Boston Division, from 2017 to 2025. The squad he sat on there ran national security work aimed at one person tied to a country the court documents will only call an “adversarial nation.” Two sources told NBC News that country is Russia. From there he landed at headquarters in the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, carrying a Top Secret clearance and access to sensitive compartmented information. The bureau routinely goes after crypto accounts run by criminals and state actors, and the call on whether to grab one or let it keep running as an intelligence feed gets made on a case-by-case basis. That is the part that reportedly frustrated Yaroch.

He told investigators he could not say exactly how much he took because he had mixed it with his own assets and investment gains, though he estimated under $1 million. What investigators turned up was a transfer of roughly $1.02 million around July 23 into Suilend, a lending platform that runs without a middleman. An early look at that account put the balance at about $933,756. Another $188,570 sat in a Kraken account.

This all came to light after he contacted a Justice Department employee on July 28 and asked for a private meeting. The next day he broke down and admitted what he had done, saying it was “eating him up inside” and he wanted to “get it off his chest.” The employee told him to get a lawyer and report it immediately. He then filed an online FBI self-report form and went to headquarters in person, telling personnel he wanted to disclose something because he had “screwed up.” When agents interviewed him at his house, he put it more bluntly: “I fucked up.”

The bureau moved fast. He was placed on administrative leave July 29, fired July 31, and arrested at his Ashburn, Virginia, home later that same day after he signed a consent form letting investigators seize the funds. About $925,426 landed in wallets the government controls, while $165,582 stayed put at Kraken because there is no way to push US dollars into a government crypto wallet. Agents walked out of the house with a hardware wallet, his computers and phones, and a handwritten scrap of paper with what they think are seed phrases.

Yaroch was fully cooperative, unlocking his devices with his biometrics, until he learned he was under criminal investigation, at which point he stopped talking and asked for a lawyer.

He is charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods and receipt of stolen goods, covering conduct from at least Jan. 1, 2025, through July 31, 2026. He has not been charged with stealing the cryptocurrency itself. The affidavit says Yaroch “never interacted with anyone associated with the adversarial accounts, including foreign entities.”

In a statement, the FBI said, “As soon as the FBI became aware of these allegations, we immediately took action, began an investigation, and ultimately executed an arrest warrant for this individual last week. We hold our employees to the highest ethical standards, and this conduct is not tolerated at the FBI. We are conducting a thorough investigation in the aftermath, and as this is an ongoing matter, we will have no further comment.”