Former NCA officer Paul Chowles ordered to repay $2.4M for 50 BTC he stole from a Silk Road 2.0 seizure in 2017, now valued at 30× the original theft amount.
Regulation & Gov ·
A UK court has ordered Paul Chowles, a former National Crime Agency officer, to repay approximately £1.8 million ($2.4 million) following his conviction for stealing 50 Bitcoin seized during a dark web investigation. The coins originated from a wallet connected to Silk Road 2.0 and were worth roughly £60,000 ($77,000) when Chowles took them in 2017. The confiscation order, secured by the Crown Prosecution Service under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, reflects Bitcoin's substantial appreciation over the nine-year period.
Chowles worked on the NCA team investigating Silk Road 2.0 and held responsibility for extracting cryptocurrency from seized devices. In May 2017, he diverted 50 BTC from the marketplace operator's reserve wallet, fragmented the amount across multiple transactions, routed the funds through Bitcoin Fog, and then converted them to fiat currency via debit cards across 279 transactions. The theft remained attributed to the marketplace operator until 2022, when a home search recovered devices containing the private keys, enabling Merseyside Police to trace the funds.
Chowles was sentenced to five years and six months in July 2025 after pleading guilty to theft and money-laundering offenses. Thirty of the stolen coins were recovered; the repayment amount incorporates their current valuation. A compensation order for the victim has also been issued, though details of its value remain unclear.