A UK court has ordered former National Crime Agency officer Paul Chowles to pay £1,810,678.93 — roughly $2.4 million — for stealing 50 Bitcoin from a wallet seized during the Silk Road 2.0 investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed on Wednesday.

The coins were worth about £60,000, or $77,000, when Chowles took them in 2017. The CPS secured the confiscation order at court under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and the gap between the theft value and the repayment figure reflects Bitcoin's appreciation over nine years. Thirty of the 50 BTC were recovered, and the order includes their full current value.

Chowles, 44, of Bristol, worked on the NCA team investigating Silk Road 2.0, the dark web marketplace Thomas White launched weeks after the FBI shut down the original Silk Road in 2013. He led the analysis and extraction of cryptocurrency from seized devices — then moved 50 BTC out of a confiscated wallet.

How did he cash out the coins?

According to the CPS account of the case:

• Chowles drained White's reserve wallet over two days in May 2017.
• He split the sum into smaller amounts and routed them through the Bitcoin Fog mixing service.
• He cashed out via Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards across 279 transactions totaling £144,580.

Who was blamed at the time?

The theft was attributed to Thomas White for years. White denied it throughout, and by late 2021 investigators had written the missing coins off as untraceable. A 2022 search of Chowles' home turned up devices holding the private keys. Merseyside Police then traced the funds through the mixer with assistance from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

What punishment has he received?

Liverpool Crown Court jailed Chowles for five years and six months in July 2025, after he pleaded guilty to theft, transferring criminal property and concealing criminal property. The NCA dismissed him on 11 July 2025. Alongside the confiscation order, the court has issued a compensation order for the victim in the case.

"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. Clements said the agency would "pursue offenders' assets relentlessly."

What does the case signal for crypto enforcement?

The confiscation order shows how UK prosecutors value stolen cryptocurrency at current market worth rather than at the point of theft, multiplying the financial exposure for anyone who holds illicit coins through a price cycle. It also demonstrates that mixing services no longer guarantee obscurity: Chainalysis-assisted tracing reconstructed a 2017 laundering chain that police had formally abandoned as untraceable in 2021.

The CPS Proceeds of Crime Division has recovered more than £530 million through confiscation orders over the past five years and returned over £102 million of that to victims. Chowles now faces the standard enforcement consequences of a confiscation order, including potential additional imprisonment if he fails to pay.