Officer who stole Bitcoin from crime network jailed

An officer from the National Crime Agency (NCA) has been jailed for five and a half years after stealing nearly £60,000 worth of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Paul Chowles, 42, from Bristol, used the dark web to transfer Bitcoin belonging to a drug trafficker into his various accounts.

The value of Bitcoin soared after the theft and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) calculated Chowles spent £144,580 before he was caught.

At the time of sentencing, police said the 50 Bitcoin he stole had grown in value to now be worth more than £4.4m.

Chowles was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court earlier after previously pleading guilty to theft, transferring criminal property and concealing criminal property.

In 2013, Chowles was part of an NCA investigation which targeted organised criminal networks selling illegal goods on the dark website Silk Road 1.

This led to the arrest of Thomas White, who had launched a back-up website less than a month after the FBI had shut down the original page.

White was jailed for 64 months in April 2019.

Following the seizure of 97 Bitcoin from White, it was noticed that 50 Bitcoin had been withdrawn from the digital wallet.

The NCA assumed White had somehow accessed the wallet while in custody, but he denied any involvement.

An investigation was launched by Merseyside Police into the stolen Bitcoin and Chowles - who had worked on the extraction of cryptocurrency from White's devices - was arrested in May 2022.

It was soon uncovered Chowles had broken down the Bitcoin into smaller amounts and transferred it into various bank accounts to "hide the trail of money".

Several notebooks were discovered in Chowles' office which contained usernames, passwords and statements relating to White's cryptocurrency accounts.

Det Ch Insp John Black, from Merseyside Police's Force Intelligence Bureau, said the case illustrated in the "starkest terms that nobody is above the law".

"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," he said.

"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."

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