A court in the United Kingdom has ordered a former National Crime Agency (NCA) officer to repay £1,810,678.93 — roughly $2.4 million — for stealing 50 Bitcoin from a wallet seized during a criminal investigation. When Paul Chowles took the coins in 2017, they were worth only about £60,000, or approximately $77,000.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) secured the confiscation order against Chowles, 44, of Bristol, on Wednesday under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 — the UK's principal legislation for stripping offenders of the financial benefit of their crimes — according to an official announcement from the agency.

⚖️ Former NCA officer Paul Chowles, 44, ordered to repay more than £1.8million after Bitcoin theft. He stole and hid 50 Bitcoin that was seized during an investigation into the dark web marketplace Silk Road 2.0. Read more 👉 pic.twitter.com/jWvGtCMELJ

— Crown Prosecution Service (@CPSUK) September 30, 2026

Thirty of the 50 BTC were recovered from Chowles, and the confiscation order accounts for their total value. The CPS attributes the gap between the coins' worth at the time of the theft and the size of the repayment order to Bitcoin's appreciation since 2017. That dynamic is worth noting for observers of crypto enforcement: the repayment liability moved with the asset rather than being frozen at the theft-date price, which is why the sum now owed stands at roughly thirty times the £60,000 at stake in 2017.

Chowles served on the NCA team investigating Silk Road 2.0, a dark web marketplace launched by Thomas White just weeks after the FBI shut down the original Silk Road in 2013. As part of that investigation, he took the lead on analyzing and extracting cryptocurrency from devices seized in the case — then moved 50 BTC out of a confiscated wallet and attempted to obscure where it went.

The coins came from White's own reserve wallet over two days in May 2017. Chowles broke the sum into smaller amounts, routed it through the Bitcoin Fog mixing service, and cashed out through Cryptopay and Wirex debit cards across 279 transactions totaling £144,580.

For years, the theft was blamed on White, who denied it throughout, and by late 2021 the missing coins had been written off as untraceable. That changed in 2022, when a search of Chowles' home turned up devices holding the private keys, and Merseyside Police traced the funds through the mixer with help from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The turnabout reflects a defining feature of digital-asset crime: every Bitcoin transaction is permanently recorded on a public blockchain, so trails routed through mixing services can be re-examined years later with modern analytics tools.

Chowles was jailed for five years and six months at Liverpool Crown Court in July 2025 after pleading guilty to theft, transferring criminal property, and concealing criminal property. The NCA dismissed him on 11 July 2025. For agencies that seize cryptocurrency, the case underlines an internal custody risk: the officer tasked with extracting and safeguarding confiscated digital assets can be the one who takes them, and here that possibility went undetected long enough for the coins to be written off as lost.

"Paul Chowles 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, who added that the agency would "pursue offenders' assets relentlessly."

A compensation order has also been made for the victim in the case. The CPS division has recovered more than £530 million through confiscation orders over the past five years, returning over £102 million of that sum to victims. For observers, how the compensation order is administered — and how much of the victim's loss it ultimately restores — is the remaining piece of the case to watch.