FBI Agent Crypto Theft: $2.47M Stolen From 35 Cases
This FBI agent crypto theft case ended in a guilty plea on Thursday, November 5. Patrick Steven Yaroch, 37, admitted to wire fraud and money laundering. Decrypt and CryptoSlate both report he took about $2.47 million from wallets tied to 35 FBI investigations. It is a crime story, not a mining story, and we say below what it means for miners.
How the FBI agent crypto theft worked
First, both outlets cite the Justice Department and say he made about 100 unauthorized transfers, using credentials from 35 separate investigations. CryptoSlate says the wallets belonged to suspected criminals, adversarial nation-state actors and at least one FBI operational wallet. Decrypt says the money was swapped into other coins and moved on through further transactions.
Decrypt quotes the affidavit: he said the bureau “could not or would not act” against an adversary’s crypto accounts, so he took matters into his own hands. Both outlets say he spent some of the money on credit cards, car payments and other debts. The FBI terminated him on July 31, per CryptoSlate.
How much was recovered
The numbers match after rounding. CryptoSlate gives $925,426 in crypto from accounts he controlled, plus $165,582 held in dollars at Kraken. Decrypt says about $925,000 went to government-controlled wallets and about $165,600 at Kraken could not be moved. Only Decrypt names where the rest sat: about $933,800 in Suilend, a lending protocol on Sui, reached through the Slush wallet, and about $188,600 at Kraken. So roughly $1.09 million of the $2.47 million is accounted for. The sources do not say where the other $1.38 million went. We will not guess.
The ChatGPT and Portugal detail
Both outlets say he asked ChatGPT about investing and moving to the European Union. The chatbot floated a vineyard in Portugal. Then he gave Portuguese lawyers power of attorney to get a tax ID and planned a trip for September. That is how investigators read his plans, per the affidavit as reported.
Sentencing in the FBI agent crypto theft case
Sentencing is set for March 4, 2027, in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The maximum is up to 20 years in prison. Also, neither outlet we read names the judge, and we did not read the DOJ release itself, so treat the exact dollar figure as the reported one.
Miner math: what this theft does to your margin today
Here is the live maths on November 6. Bitcoin is $75,635 and the network is 1036 EH/s, so hashprice is about $33.13 per petahash per day. That is what one PH/s of hashing earns before power.
| Machine | 5c/kWh | 8c/kWh | 12c/kWh | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antminer S19 (95 TH/s, 3250 W) | -$0.75 | -$3.09 | -$6.21 | 4.0c |
| Antminer S19k Pro (115 TH/s, 2645 W) | $0.64 | -$1.27 | -$3.81 | 6.0c |
| Antminer S19 XP (141 TH/s, 3010 W) | $1.06 | -$1.11 | -$4.00 | 6.5c |
| Antminer S21 Pro (234 TH/s, 3510 W) | $3.54 | $1.01 | -$2.36 | 9.2c |
Numbers are profit per day after electricity, at the three power prices shown. Break-even is the most you can pay per kilowatt-hour before the machine loses money. Specs are the manufacturer ratings; network data comes from mempool.space. Try your own power price in our free bitcoin mining profit calculator. See what these machines really sold for in our used ASIC miner price index. Want to run the same numbers on a machine you can buy today? See our used ASIC miners, or buy several at once through bulk lots.
This is not a hashrate event, so test the risk that matters: if bitcoin falls 3%: the break-even power price on an S19k Pro falls from 6.0 to 5.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. At 8 cents, daily profit goes from -$1.27 to -$1.38.
The blunt answer for ASIC owners
Nothing here changes hashprice today. Network hashrate is near 1036 EH/s per mempool.space, and the table above decides who makes money. However, this $2.47 million theft is tiny next to daily bitcoin volume, and no source ties it to any market move. Therefore, we think the useful lesson is custody. Seized coins sat behind credentials that one insider could reach. If you hold mined coins, do not leave them behind one login. Use cold storage and split access.
If your power costs more than the break-even column, no court case fixes that. See our we buy used miners page, browse all miners, or read the mining economics guides.
-Nick
ING Mining
This is general information, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile, and exchanges can fail. Please do your own research.
How this story was made: drafted with the help of AI tools from public sources, then edited by Nick Squires. See our editorial policy. Spot an error? Email ns@ingmining.com.