Detective at National Crime Agency who stole bitcoin worth £60k during probe into Silk Road is jailed - with haul now worth £4.4MILLION

Daily Mail​

16-07-2025

A former top National Crime Agency detective who stole bitcoin digital currency while investigating a major drug dealer on the dark web was today jailed for five and a half years.
Paul Chowles, 42, secretly took the cryptocurrency from the operator of the underground Internet marketplace following his arrest, in May 2017.
Using 'sophisticated' techniques he learned on the job, the 'extremely calculating' officer managed to launder and hide the 50 bitcoin, then worth around £60,000, in online accounts for almost five years.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that, over that time the value of the bitcoin increased enormously to £4.3million.
But Chowles was relatively frugal with his spending - using the cash to make routine, day-to-day purchases at supermarkets and shops, such as Screw Fix and Asda, paying for meals out in restaurants and pubs or for his children's nursery fees - so as not to arouse suspicion.
Overall, he spent around 20 bitcoin, the equivalent of around £110,000, via hundreds of debit card payments and transactions.
However, prosecutors believe he benefited financially to the value of more than £600,000 from his criminality and was saving millions more as a 'nest egg' for his retirement.
Chowles was eventually caught when the drug dealer was released from prison and complained to police that his valuable bitcoin was missing.
Officers followed the complicated digital money trail and eventually discovered the highly skilled former officer was responsible.
Jailing Chowles, who pleaded guilty to theft and transferring and concealing criminal property, Judge David Aubrey KC told him he had abused his 'privileged' position at the NCA, which demanded 'utter trust, integrity and honesty.'
'You had knowledge of cryptocurrency, which was a great asset to your agency, provided you used it in the pursuit of justice,' the judge said. 'Alas you did not.
'Instead you weaved a sophisticated, intricate and dishonest web, a web of deceit and guile.
'The public expects people like you, in the position you were in, to act with integrity and honesty and in accordance with the law.
'You were in a position of power and you abused that privilege. You were there to serve the public but you did not. You were serving yourself for your own ends.'
The prison sentence marks a dramatic fall from grace for Chowles, a divorced father-of-three young children, with no previous convictions, who has now lost his £33,000-a-year job and his liberty. He was formally dismissed from the NCA earlier this month.
Craig Hassall KC, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that, in 2017, Chowles was a senior officer with the NCA – Britain's equivalent of the FBI - in charge of investigating Thomas White, a university dropout described as the 'guiding mind' behind a clandestine website known as Silk Road 2.0.
The marketplaces allowed users to buy and sell drugs and other illegal items on the dark web, using bitcoin for their transactions.
After White, who was jailed for five years and four months in April 2019, was arrested Chowles led the analysis and extraction of relevant data and cryptocurrency from his computers and other electronic devices.
Over two days, in May 2017, he stole and moved 50 bitcoin from one of White's online wallets. He was then able to use his expertise to break it down into smaller amounts and move it through a system on the dark web, known as the bitcoin 'fog,' which effectively 'washed' or laundered the dirty money, before sending it back.
He then transferred it into different legitimate private accounts, in an attempt to hide the money trail.
The bitcoin fog was eventually shut down by the FBI but this is believed to be the first prosecution linked to it in the UK.
Although financial investigators at the NCA looked into White's claims that the money had disappeared at the time, the NCA team - which included Chowles - concluded that White must have found a way to move it himself before he was jailed.
It was only when Merseyside police became involved, after White was released, and attempts launched to recover his assets, via proceeds of crime investigations, that he continued to insist the money was still missing, and officers began to suspect foul play.
White insisted someone from within the NCA had to have stolen the bitcoin because they had the private keys for his cryptocurrency wallet.
Chowles, of Bristol, was arrested in May 2022 and his devices seized. Police recovered an iPhone, which linked to an account he had used to transfer the bitcoin. It also revealed he had searched online for a cryptocurrency exchange service.
Several notebooks were also discovered in his office which contained usernames, passwords, and statements relating to White's cryptocurrency accounts.
Will Parkhill, defending Chowles, said: 'He did not do the right thing. It was dishonest and dishonest not once, but on a number of occasions.
'It seems at the time he was suffering from anxiety and depression. It seems at the time he was dealing with undiagnosed autism.
'He feels shame and remorse. Mr Chowles destroyed his life and it had serious impact on other people.'
Following the hearing, Alex Johnson, specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service's Special Crime Division, said: 'Within the NCA, Paul Chowles was regarded as someone who was competent, technically minded and very aware of the dark web and cryptocurrencies.
'He took advantage of his position working on this investigation by lining his own pockets while devising a plan that he believed would ensure that suspicion would never fall upon him.
'Once he had stolen the cryptocurrency, Paul Chowles sought to muddy the waters and cover his tracks by transferring the Bitcoin into mixing services to help hide the trail of money.
'He made a large amount of money through his criminality, and it is only right that he is punished for his corrupt actions.
'The CPS will not hesitate to bring charges against those who abuse their position in power for financial gain.'
Chowles offending began during his investigation into White, a self-taught computer expert, who first began using the original Silk Road marketplace in 2013 to buy a prescription drugs for a sleeping disorder.
He then started selling items, including drug-testing kits and the illegal party drug MDMA, before later progressing to offering security advice and creating backups of vendor pages and forums in case the site was taken down.
When, in October 2013, the FBI had shut down the Silk Road and arrested it's founder Ross Ulbricht, White collaborated with another American to set up a new version of the marketplace, Silk Road 2.0.
He took on Ulbricht's moniker of Dread Pirate Roberts, taken from the identities of multiple fearsome pirate characters in the novel and film The Princess Bride, and began running the site from his student accommodation, in Liverpool.
But White was eventually arrested and jailed for running the site, in April 2019. At the time, Chowles – with fellow NCA detective colleague Garry Tancock – gave a statement as lead officers in the investigation.
But by then, and unbeknown to his NCA colleagues, Chowles had already helped himself to White's online bitcoin stash. Among the cryptocurrency he stole was bitcoin taken from a wallet White had named the 'Dread Pirate Roberts Retirement Fund.'
Mr Johnson added: 'Of the 50 Bitcoin stolen Paul Chowles spent approximately 20 of them and still had hold of 30 which he might well have gone on to spend had he not been apprehended.
'He stole it from a Bitcoin wallet called the Dread Pirate Roberts Retirement Fund. Perhaps he considered this to be the Paul Chowles retirement fund.'
He added: 'One of the curious aspects of this case is that Chowles was able to go on and spend more money than he stole in the first instance because of the explosion in the value of the bitcoin during the time that it was in his possession.'
Detective Chief Inspector John Black, from Merseyside Police's Force Intelligence Bureau, said: 'It will be extremely disappointing to everyone that someone involved in law enforcement could involve themselves in the very criminality they are tasked with investigating and preventing.
'This case should illustrate in the starkest terms that nobody is above the law. When it became clear that one of the NCA's own officers had stolen Bitcoin, our officers conducted extensive enquiries to unearth a trail of evidence that Chowles had attempted to hide. This was supported fully by the NCA.
'He took advantage of his position on this investigation to line his own pockets while devising a plan that he believed would cover his tracks. He was wrong.'