A former National Crime Agency (NCA) officer Paul Chowles has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison for stealing 50 Bitcoin, worth $5.9 million, seized while probing into Silk Road 2.0.
Chowles, an ex-operational officer, was part of the team investigating Silk Road and its successor, Silk Road 2.0. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced the sentence and its details on Wednesday.
Silk Road 2.0 was launched and co-founded by Thomas White a month after the FBI shut down the original Silk Road and arrested its founder, Ross Ulbricht, in October 2013. Silk Road 2.0 operated for a year before its 2014 closure by the FBI. As the lead analyst for White’s devices, Chowles managed the NCA’s seizure of 97 Bitcoins from White in November 2014. However, 50 Bitcoins were illicitly transferred to another address in May 2017.
To hide his tracks, he used the crypto mixing service Bitcoin Fog. However, Chainalysis’ blockchain analytics tool helped the police trace some funds. Chowles had also used special debit cards that work with crypto. CPS prosecutor Alex Johnson described Chowles as a technically skilled officer who exploited his role to “line his own pockets,” believing his plan would avoid detection.
Initially, the NCA assumed White had moved the Bitcoin, but he insisted that an insider with wallet access, likely from the NCA, stole it since he no longer had the private key. This led to a meeting with Merseyside Police, attended by Chowles, triggering an investigation.
Police eventually found a phone linking Chowles to the transfer, plus notebooks in his office with White’s crypto account details. Chowles spent 109,425 British pounds ($146,580) using debit cards, though the CPS estimates his total gain at 613,150 British pounds ($821,345). The police arrested Chowles in May 2022, and he later pleaded guilty to charges of theft, transferring criminal property, and concealing criminal property.
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