Former NCA officer Paul Chowles ordered to repay $2.4M for Bitcoin theft during Silk Road 2.0 probe

A former officer with the UK’s National Crime Agency has been hit with a confiscation order of £1,810,678.93 (roughly $2.4 million) after stealing 50 Bitcoin during a 2017 investigation into Silk Road 2.0. Paul Chowles, 44, from Bristol, was supposed to be one of the good guys. The Bitcoin he pocketed was worth about £60,000 at the time. That means the confiscation order values his theft at more than 30 times what those coins were worth when he took them. How a cop became a crypto criminal Chowles committed the theft in May 2017 while working as part of the NCA’s investigation into Silk Road 2.0, the successor to the original dark web marketplace where drugs, weapons, and other illicit goods changed hands. The NCA had seized approximately 97 BTC as part of the probe, and Chowles helped himself to 50 of them. Chowles ran the stolen Bitcoin through mixing services, including Bitcoin Fog, a tumbler designed to obscure transaction trails by pooling and redistributing coins. He then converted portions of the crypto into fiat currency using services like Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards. Over time, he spent roughly £613,000 on personal expenses. His undoing came from an unlikely source: t...