A UK court has issued a confiscation order of £1,810,678.93 (roughly $2.4 million) against Paul Chowles, a former officer of the National Crime Agency who stole 50 Bitcoin during a 2017 investigation into the dark web marketplace Silk Road 2.0. The order, dated September 30, 2026, values the theft at more than 30 times the roughly £60,000 the coins were worth when he took them.

Chowles, 44, from Bristol, committed the theft in May 2017 while assigned to the NCA's Silk Road 2.0 probe. The agency had seized approximately 97 BTC as part of the investigation. Chowles helped himself to 50 of them — more than half of the entire seizure — and the loss went unnoticed for five years.

How the theft unfolded

Chowles moved 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 through Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards, spending roughly £613,000 on personal expenses over time.

His undoing came from an unlikely source. Thomas White, the operator of Silk Road 2.0, reported the missing coins after his release from prison.

Merseyside Police took over the investigation and enlisted blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis to trace the funds. Despite the mixing services and multiple conversion points, the on-chain trail led back to Chowles. Police arrested him in May 2022.

What did the prosecution and sentencing look like?

In May 2025, Chowles pleaded guilty to one count of theft and two counts of money laundering. On July 16, 2025, the court sentenced him to five and a half years in prison.

The confiscation order reflects the current value of roughly 30 BTC that investigators recovered from Chowles. The remaining 20 BTC were deemed spent — already converted and dispersed through years of personal expenditure before his arrest.

Prosecutors valued the recovery based on the appreciated worth of the assets, not their value at the time of theft. When Chowles stole 50 BTC in 2017, the haul was worth around £60,000, or approximately $80,000. The £1.8 million order demonstrates how dramatically Bitcoin's price has moved since then — and how UK confiscation law captures that appreciation on behalf of the public purse.

Why did the forensics win?

The case adds to a growing body of evidence that mixing services no longer guarantee anonymity. Bitcoin Fog's alleged operator, Roman Sterlingov, was convicted in the US in 2024, and law enforcement agencies with modern forensic tools have systematically dismantled the service's reputation as a reliable way to obscure transaction history.

For Chowles, the combination of on-chain analysis and the fiat off-ramps he chose proved decisive. Cryptopay and Wirex both comply with know-your-customer requirements, creating a paper trail at the point of conversion that tied the laundered funds to his identity. The mixing layer slowed investigators down; it did not stop them.

What does the case say about insider risk?

The operational failure is as significant as the crime. Chowles walked away with more than half of the Bitcoin seized in a high-profile investigation without anyone noticing for five years, and the gap only surfaced because the target of the probe reported it himself.

The case raises broader questions about insider threats in law enforcement. Officers with access to seized crypto wallets and private keys hold opportunities for theft that traditional asset seizures don't present. A seized car or a bank account has institutional custody layers; a private key can be copied and moved without any visible sign of removal at the time.

Chainalysis tracing, KYC-compliant off-ramps and the eventual conviction of mixer operators closed the loop in this instance. Whether UK agencies respond with stricter custody controls over seized digital assets — cold-storage protocols, multi-signature requirements, independent audit trails — will determine whether the next five-year gap gets caught earlier.