- A former British National Crime Agency officer has been sentenced to over five years for stealing seized bitcoins
- Paul Chowles pleaded guilty to theft and money laundering tied to 50 BTC taken from a Silk Road 2.0 suspect and was sentenced to five and a half years
- Authorities recovered a portion of the stolen crypto after the original suspect reported the coins missing
A former investigator with the UKs National Crime Agency (NCA), Paul Chowles, has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison after admitting to stealing 50 bitcoins from evidence seized in the Silk Road 2.0 case. Chowles used his access to move the bitcoins in 2017 through a mixer to obscure their origins and was only caught years later when the original suspect, Thomas White, reported the coins missing. A multi-year investigation involving blockchain analytics eventually exposed Chowles as the thief, leading to his arrest, dismissal, and conviction.
Covert Theft Unraveled Years Later
Chowles was part of the team responsible for processing seized crypto assets linked to Silk Road 2.0 co-founder Thomas White. In May 2017, Chowles quietly transferred 50 BTC from Whites retirement wallet, sending the funds through Bitcoin Fog to hide the trail. The missing coins went unnoticed until White, under post-prison supervision, flagged the anomaly, stating that only someone with internal access and private keys could have conducted the theft.
That tip sparked a covert inquiry, where investigators at Merseyside Police and the NCA worked alongside Chainalysis to trace the stolen funds through mixing services and onto exchanges. Their forensic work uncovered Chowless involvement through a combination of on-chain evidence, phone records, browser data, and handwritten notes found in his office that referenced Whites private keys.
Guilty Plea Reduced Sentence
Chowles pleaded guilty in May 2025 to theft and two counts of concealing criminal property. At his sentencing in July, Judge David Aubrey said Chowles would have continued to benefit from the theft had he not been caught. Prosecutors confirmed that nearly �470,000 of the stolen bitcoin has been recovered so far, although some remains unaccounted for. Crown Prosecution Service specialist Alex Johnson noted that Chowles made a large amount of money through his criminality, and it is only right that he is punished for his corrupt actions.
The case draws parralels with those of former Drug Enforcement Agency officer Carl Force and former Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges, both of whom stole bitcoins worth billions of dollars from the original Silk Road investigation. Bridges and Force were also undone through blockchain investigations and ended up spending time in prison.
