Former NCA Officer Ordered to Repay £1.8 Million for Stealing 50 Bitcoin in Silk Road 2.0 Case

In brief

A UK court has ordered former National Crime Agency officer Paul Chowles to pay £1,810,678.93, around $2.4 million.

He stole 50 BTC from a wallet seized during an investigation into the dark web marketplace Silk Road 2.0.

The coins were worth about £60,000, or $77,000, when he took them in 2017.

A former National Crime Agency officer has been ordered to repay £1,810,678.93, around $2.4 million, over the theft of 50 Bitcoin from a wallet seized in a dark web investigation, coins that were worth roughly £60,000, or $77,000, when he took them nine years ago.

The Crown Prosecution Service secured the confiscation order against Paul Chowles, 44, of Bristol, on Wednesday under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Thirty of the 50 BTC were recovered from Chowles, with the order including their total value. The CPS attributes the gap between the two figures to Bitcoin's appreciation since 2017.

Chowles was part of the NCA team investigating Silk Road 2.0, the marketplace Thomas White launched weeks after the FBI shut down the original Silk Road in 2013. He took the lead on analyzing and extracting cryptocurrency from devices seized in the case, then moved 50 BTC out of a confiscated wallet and tried to obscure where it went.

The coins came from White's own reserve wallet over two days in May 2017. Chowles broke the sum into smaller amounts, routed them through the Bitcoin Fog mixing service, and cashed out through Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards across 279 transactions totaling £144,580.

The theft was blamed on White for years. He denied it throughout, and by late 2021 the missing coins had been written off as untraceable. A search of Chowles' home in 2022 turned up devices holding the private keys, and Merseyside Police traced the funds through the mixer with help from Chainalysis.

He was jailed for five years and six months at Liverpool Crown Court in July 2025, after pleading guilty to theft, transferring criminal property and concealing criminal property. The NCA dismissed him on 11 July 2025.

"Paul Chowles exploited a position of trust for personal gain, stealing assets that had already been recovered through law enforcement action," said Luke Clements, a specialist prosecutor in the CPS Proceeds of Crime Division, who said the agency would "pursue offenders' assets relentlessly."

A compensation order has also been made for the victim in the case. The CPS division has recovered more than £530 million through confiscation orders over the past five years, returning over £102 million of it to victims.