FBI Agent Charged with Stealing $1M in Crypto from Probes

Prosecutors said Yarmoch extracted crypto private keys from FBI computer systems and made at least a dozen transfers to himself. The assets were held in accounts linked to foreign individuals he had investigated. He used Kraken, a U.S. exchange, and Suilend, the decentralized finance protocol on the Sui blockchain, through a Slush wallet, the filing said.

Searches of his computer and phone turned up queries to AI apps. One question read: "If you had a bucket of money (around $1 million) and you wanted to leave the USA and become a resident or citizen of an EU country, what would you do?" The app recommended Portugal, the filing said. Investigators also found travel itineraries for Yarmoch, his wife and their children to visit Portugal next month. He had taken recent trips to Germany, Portugal and Grenada that he failed to report internally, in violation of FBI rules.

Yarmoch, a resident of Ashburn, Virginia, had previously worked out of Boston on a national-security squad handling the same adversary nation. He is being held in detention in Alexandria, Virginia, pending a federal court appearance. The filing did not specify the exact cryptocurrency stolen, only that it exceeded $1 million.