NCA officer jailed for swiping Bitcoin now worth £4,300,000 from Dark Web suspec

Metro

4 days ago

A National Crime Agency (NCA) officer who stole Bitcoin from a hacker's USB stick has been jailed.
Paul Chowles, 42, was investigating university drop-out Thomas White, from Liverpool, the 'guiding mind' behind running the Silk Road, an online black market for illegal drugs.
The father-of-three waited 'until the coast was clear' before he began spending £144,000 of the converted cryptocurrency on nursery fees.
When he was arrested in 2017 White owned 97 Bitcoin on a memory stick which was seized and transferred to a team including digital investigator Chowles at the National Crime Agency in Bristol.
Father-of-three Chowles used his technical knowledge – and the lack of expertise in the relatively new phenomena of cryptocurrencies by law enforcement – to swipe 50 Bitcoin from White to himself in May 2017.
At the time it was worth £59,000 – but it is now worth more than £4.3 million, Craig Hassall KC, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court.
Chowles, who has children aged two, five and seven and whose wife has now divorced him, admitted at an earlier hearing theft, transferring criminal property, and concealing criminal property, between 2017 and 2022.
Passing sentence, Judge David Aubrey KC said: 'The gravamen of these offences is your betrayal of the trust of the NCA you were serving.
'You were in a position of privilege and power. You had arrested Thomas White and you abused that privilege and power placed in you.
'You were there to serve the public. You did not. You were serving yourself for your own ends.
'Honesty should have been in your DNA, but it was not.'
Earlier, Mr Hassall told the court that after White was released from jail in 2022, he told the authorities 50 of his Bitcoins were missing.
Chowles, a £33,000-a-year NCA officer, then came under suspicion.
White told the NCA the Bitcoin could only have been moved from his digital wallet by somebody within the NCA because they had access to the private keys for his cryptocurrency wallet and that it was an 'inside job'.
Chowles was arrested at the NCA offices on May 19, 2022 and his home searched and devices seized. He was suspended by the NCA and placed under investigation before being sacked.
At the time of Chowles's arrest, 20 Bitcoin were recovered from his devices and 10 more were later located in another account.
The other 20 has been spent.
Mr Hassall said though the Bitcoin had been stolen in 2017, Chowles only began converting and spending the digital currency in 2021, because he probably assumed 'the coast was clear' and he had got away with the theft.
The court heard Chowles did not convert the Bitcoin into cash to live the 'high life' or have a flashy lifestyle.
Instead, he converted around £144,000 from Bitcoin into cash to spend on day-to-day living expenses in supermarkets and to pay for his children's nursery fees.
Will Parkhill, defending Chowles, said: 'He did not do the right thing. It was dishonest and dishonest not once, but on a number of occasions.
'It seems at the time he was suffering from anxiety and depression. It seems at the time he was dealing with undiagnosed autism.
'He feels shame and remorse. Mr Chowles destroyed his life and it had serious impact on other people.'
Alex Johnson, specialist prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service's special crime division, said: 'Within the NCA, Paul Chowles was regarded as someone who was competent, technically minded and very aware of the dark web and cryptocurrencies.
'He took advantage of his position working on this investigation by lining his own pockets while devising a plan that he believed would ensure that suspicion would never fall upon him.
'Once he had stolen the cryptocurrency, Paul Chowles sought to muddy the waters and cover his tracks by transferring the Bitcoin into mixing services to help hide the trail of money.
'He made a large amount of money through his criminality, and it is only right that he is punished for his corrupt actions.
'The CPS will not hesitate to bring charges against those who abuse their position in power for financial gain.'
A National Crime Agency spokesperson said: 'We understand and fully share the concern this case will cause the public we serve. The former officer was sacked for gross misconduct.
'The NCA expects the highest standards of conduct and behaviour from all our officers, and we are committed to taking robust action against anyone who falls short of those standards, as we did in this case, resulting in an investigation fully supported by the agency's anti-corruption unit.'
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