There are dozens of pathways to getting rich as a member of the Trump administration with little to zero consequences for doing so. Somehow, a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation figured out one of the few ways to get in trouble for it. According to the New York Times, a counterintelligence agent at the agency will face criminal charges for allegedly stealing about $1 million worth of cryptocurrency.
Per the report, an FBI agent named Patrick Yaroch is accused of lining his own pockets by making unauthorized withdrawals from an overseas criminal target by using a passphrase the agency obtained from the account holder during an investigation. Yaroch apparently hit up the free money ATM 10 to 12 times, taking money from the account and transferring it to his own crypto wallet. He eventually mixed that money into his own personal assets, but investigators were able to determine that around $1 million was ciphoned off.
The FBI searched Yaroch’s home and arrested him over the weekend, according to the Times, charging him with possession of stolen property—though he hasn’t specifically been hit with charges for stolen cryptocurrency.
But the fact that they went after him so quickly is probably because of his real crime in the eyes of this administration: having a guilty conscience. According to the Times, Yaroch started telling people around the office about stealing the cryptocurrency, saying that it was “eating him up inside” and that he just wanted to “get it off his chest.”
Yaroch reportedly plans to be cooperative in the investigation. He apparently claimed that he started making the pulls from the criminal wallet because he was “frustrated that the FBI could not or would not act against adversarial cryptocurrency accounts.” So maybe he’ll position himself as a sort of vigilante-like actor, just trying to crack down on crime when the agency won’t.
That’s probably going to be a tough sell, though, based on the fact that the FBI allegedly already has his search history and it doesn’t exactly look like a guy concerned with justice as much as he is with self-enrichment. Per the Times, Yaroch asked ChatGPT earlier this year how to best invest one million dollars with “a goal of potentially retiring around 40, and a clear interest in eventually building a slower-living vineyard/agricultural lifestyle in places like Cilento or Portugal’s Dao region.”
Sounds like a nice life if you can get it. Certainly better than prison time. Someone should have told him that all he needed to do was do some insider trading on the stock market or bet with insider knowledge on prediction markets. Those are perfectly acceptable ways to line your own pockets, after all.
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